New Delhi, Oct 11 Skeet shooters Maheshwari Chauhan and Anantjeet Singh Naruka, who narrowly missed out on a podium finish in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, will return to world-class competition at home in the ISSF World Cup final at the Dr Karni Singh Shooting Ranges in Tuglakhabad here from Sunday.
Maheshwari Chauhan, the 28-year-old medallist at the Asian Shotgun Championship, thinks a home World Cup final will give her an advantage.
“It’s a great honour and my first World Cup final as well so I am very excited to be shooting with the best. There’s just one target this time – to be on the podium,” Maheshwari was quoted as saying by SAI Media.
“I am practising harder,” said Maheshwari, who in 2017 became the first Indian woman to win a medal in skeet at an international event in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Maheshwari said she will take the lessons from the Paris experience of competing in the mixed team bronze medal shoot-off. “The Olympic Games is a great learning experience. It taught me more than anything to trust myself and my process. It strengthened my resolve to take my Olympic journey ahead with the lessons I learned from Paris,” she said.
Together with Maheshwari, Anantjeet Naruka provided Indian shotgun shooting a watershed moment at the Paris Olympic Games finishing. A silver medallist in the Hangzhou Asian Games last year, Naruka also said he would trust the process. “The one thing I keep in mind is that I have to follow the process, take it step by step, and slowly climb the ladder,” he said.
The 26-year-old Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) shooter who changed his weapon before the Olympic Games is confident of winning a medal in the World Cup final.
“It will be a good thing if I win a medal here. I want to make my country proud and I am pretty confident of clinching it this time,” he said. “I have changed my technique and working hard.”
Indian shotgun shooting, which traces its roots back to the legendary Dr. Karni Singh, who competed in five Olympic Games between 1960 and 1980 and celebrates Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore’s silver medal in 2004, saw an unprecedented six competitors line up in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Meanwhile, former National coach Vikram Singh Chopra applauded the efforts by the government to bolster India’s sporting ecosystem through schemes like Khelo India and TOPS.
“The shooters we selected back in 2018 are now under training in the National Centre of Excellence (NCoE). The base of the pyramid is really growing wide,” he told SAI Media on Friday.
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