The Hindu : Sport / Olympic Games : Sodhi’s wait proves futile

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Sport - Olympic Games

Sodhi’s wait proves futile

NEW DELHI: Ronjan Sodhi’s anxious wait for a wild card, for competing in the double trap shooting event in the Beijing Olympics, proved futile as the international body has further re-distributed the returned quota places to reach the magical number of 100 countries, rather than give it to deserving candidates like him.

With the entry deadline for the athletes having ended on July 23, Sodhi can only hope for a miraculous entry.When the Olympic entry list was made in April, the ISSF had reached the stipulated target of 390 shooters for the 15 events, with 94 countries. It had then looked back at the Athens Games to state that 106 countries had taken part then.

However, though it brought eight new countries — Fiji, Indonesia, Moldova, Macedonia, Mungeranie, Turkmenistan, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay — in the new list, after Luxembourg and the Netherlands dropped out by surrendering their lone quota place, the ISSF has given one additional entry each to Belarus and Germany to take their quota places to nine and 19 respectively.

So, it was not as if the ISSF’s idea was only to benefit new countries that did not figure in the earlier entry list, or ignore the claims of nations that deserved additional quota. The quota places have increased in men’s air pistol, trap, skeet apart from women’s air rifle and trap by one each. The quota places have reduced in men’s free rifle three-position, free pistol and women’s rifle 3-position. — Special Correspondent