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Shooters the best bet for medals

Kamesh Srinivasan

OLYMPIC GAMES / Strong field means that Ronjan Sodhi misses out

NEW DELHI: Most Indian sports fans are convinced that the shooters have the best chance to strike a medal or two in the Beijing Olympics.

The main reason is that the shooters have come through stringent qualifying standards, virtually beating the world, to just make the grade.

The best part is that they have generally reached such high standards that they need not shoot their best scores to strike an Olympic medal.

Abhinav Bindra won the World championship gold in Zagreb in July 2006, topping the table in a field of 122 shooters in air rifle, to secure a berth for his third successive Olympics.

Unlucky

Abhinav had shot 597 out of 600 in winning the World championship gold, but he was unlucky to miss a medal in the Olympics at Athens with the same score, owing to an unstable surface on which he was standing in the final.

Looking back, you find that Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore had won a bronze medal in double trap in the World championship in 2003 in Nicosia to get one of the last berths for the Athens Olympics before marching ahead to capture the first individual silver medal for independent India in the Olympic Games.

Compared to the last Olympics, the current Indian team is strengthened by two world champions and an Olympic medallist.

On the flip side, the Olympic bound shooters, except Gagan Narang, have not won a medal on the world stage this season.

However, as the Italian coach Marcello Dradi, had emphasised, while trying to explain the low scores of World champion Manavjit Sandhu, it had to be conceded that the shooters have been focusing purely on training and preparing hard, rather than touch their best form.

Competitive mode

By moving into the competitive mode already and winning a bronze medal in the World Cup in Beijing, Gagan has captured the imagination of the entire nation.

Incidentally, Gagan also shot a 597 while missing better medals by decimal fractions in that World Cup.

The bottom line, of course, is that World Cup medals, or not winning them is no indication of things to follow.

Abhinav himself had nothing to show except two World Cup bronze medals all these years before he became the World champion.

A string of good scores are also no guarantee of a good fare in the Olympics, as Anjali Bhagwat had found out in Athens after having shot 399 out of 400 regularly in international competitions.

The strength of the Indian shooters can be gleaned from the fact that a double world record holder like Ronjan Sodhi could not find a place in the Olympics.

Fourth Olympics

Trap shooter Mansher Singh’s entry into his fourth Olympics, 24 years after his first in Los Angeles, was also dramatic as he endured a shoot-off in the World Cup at Lonato, after 122 out of 125, before capturing the sole berth in a strong field of 149 shooters.

By just adding a point or two to what they have been shooting this season, like 595 by Bindra, or 119 by Mansher, the Indian marksmen would be able to get into the reckoning for a final berth.

Thereafter, it will be the form of the day and destiny that would hold the key.

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