Sports India

The Indian team sported a confident look on the eve of its departure for the 49th World shooting championship in Zagreb, Croatia. The 44-member strong team, including 15 juniors, was scheduled to leave on Thursday for the World Championship to be held from July 23 to August 5. The team was awaiting the visa for Turkey, as it was booked to fly through Istanbul.

National coach Prof. Sunny Thomas expressed satisfaction with the training at the 20-day camp in Bangalore. “Except for the fact that we did not have the electronic targets much against all the efforts to transfer them from Delhi or to buy new ones, everything went off very well. We had an intense stint and not a single minute was wasted. The weather was excellent and the stay was quite comfortable. There was no room for complaint,'’ said Prof. Thomas.

The chief coach said that the team was leaving early so as to be able to practice with quality ammunition to be brought in Zagreb.

Quality ammunition

“We have quality ammunition for the competition, but did not have the same quality for practice, except for the last four days. We have no option but to buy them'’, said Prof. Thomas.

The coach felt that the Indian shooters stood a good chance to get two or three more Olympic quota places from the championship.

“There is a possibility that we may get medals also, especially in the team events, including the juniors. We have some strong shooters in juniors like Shweta Chaudhary and Harveen Srao,'’ the coach said.

In the last World championship in Lahti, Croatia, only Rajkumari Dhodiya had won a bronze medal in the junior women’s rifle prone event. Shweta missed the air pistol bronze on the count back after having tied for the third place at 382 out of 400.

Jaspal Rana had won the gold with a world junior record in standard pistol in 1994. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore had won the bronze in the shotgun World championship in 2003 and the resultant Olympic quota place had paved the way for him to clinch the silver in double trap in the Athens Games.

In preparation for the World championship and the competitions ahead, Rathore had reached Italy by the middle of last month and has been training there diligently.

The team:

Sanjeev Rajput, Abhinav Bindra, Gagan Narang, Samaresh Jung, Vijay Kumar, Jaspal Rana, Pemba Tamang, Ram Kishen, Ronak Pandit, Vivek Singh, Manavjit Singh Sandhu, Mansher Singh, Anwer Sultan, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Vikram Bhatnagar, Ronjan Sodhi, Amit Sanghi, Naveen Jindal, Mairaj Ahmed Khan, Deepali Deshpande, Kuheli Gangulee, Anjali Bhagwat, Tejaswini Sawant, Avneet Kaur Sidhu, Sonia Rai, Annuraj Singh, Saroja Kumari Juthu, Shagun Chowdhry and Arti Singh.

Juniors: Navnath Farthate, Ful Chand Bangar, Hardeep Singh, Bapu Vanzare, Nikhil Singh, Amanpreet Singh, Zakir Khan, Pushpender Singh, Bikramjit Singh Dhillon, Navdeep Kaur Dhillon, Radhika Barale, Soudaminee Gavankar, Harveen Srao, Shweta Chowdhary and Nausheen Fathima.