Rifle and Pistol shooting sport has been contributing significantly in the medal tally for India during the last decade and since Abinav Bindra won the Gold at Beijing Olympics in 2008 India is being seen as power house in this sport globally. I remember the time I spent in the shooting range during the London games in 2012 and Indian shooters were well respected in every event. This also lead to sudden spurt in the popularity of Shooting sports across the country and especially in small towns.

Following London games victory, the bronze medal winner Gagan Narang started an academy in Pune and I remember the number of youngsters came from all over the country to join the sport. Shooting suddenly became a popular sport with a large number of youngsters started doing well. In fact india’s performance in commonwealth games few months back was a reflection of this. India won 17 medals and most of these were won by new faces. Malaika Goel a 17 year old from Punjab, Jitu Rai in his early 20s were new shooting sensations for India. The great thing about shooting sport is that it allows a shooter to have a long career. I witnessed shooters of 40+ years age winning medals in London and our recent success made me believe that we as a nation are not only building a healthy and reliable bench in the international arena but also our current stars will continue to deliver for a long time.

I was hoping our shooter will carry this performance to Inchoen and win a large haul medals in these Asian games but overall shooting contingent disappointed the nation. It is true that Asian Games shooting standards are much closer to the Olympics whereas CWG shooting standards are not very high. Countries like China, Korea, Japan and few east European countries have always been good at Olympics level. However, the surprise in these games was Iran, both in men as well women categories. I heard they have got a coach who was responsible to nurture the Indian shooters few years ago.

All big names disappointed with their individual performance, except Jitu giving us our first Gold. What has happened to the likes of Gagan Narang, Vijay Kumar? I believed that their success in London will make them do better in the years to come and along with them India will have stronger presence in the shooting sports in RIO 16.

Olympic Gold Quest is investing lot of efforts in our shooters and they sincerely believe that shooters will certainly do very well in RIO. I am seriously contemplating to be with Indian contingent in RIO games in 2016 and I am looking forward to India’s performance in the range. I hope the current performance of our shooters is just a matter of temporary form and they will emerge much stronger in the coming years to give India larger medal share at RIO Olympic games.