Paris 2024: 5 pitfalls Indian shooters need to avoid
Over the years, the failures of the shooters at high-profile competitions have coalesced into certain repetitive patterns that need to be analyzed and known beforehand in order to avoid a re-run at Paris.
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Manu Bhaker will compete in the women’s 10m air pistol and the women’s 25m pistol (Image via Imago)
The 2024 Olympics are set to begin in less than a month. The 21-member strong Indian shooting team will be among the country’s largest sporting contingents in Paris.
With Indian wrestling mired in off-the-mat issues, weightlifter Mirabai Chanu facing injury troubles, the Men’s field hockey team unable to build on the last edition’s bronze (and the fourth-placing Women’s team not qualifying at all), and boxing notoriously dependent on the whims of the judges, only Neeraj Chopra in athletics and the badminton players to some extent, can be looked upon to finish on the podium for India.
Given these facts, the shooting contingent will have to start pulling their weight if India is to equal or better Tokyo 2020’s tally of 7 medals.
Since Rio 2016, the Indian shooters have spectacularly failed to live up to pre-Games expectations. India has won exactly zero medals in the sport at the Olympics after Vijay Kumar got silver in 2012. This is despite shooting sports receiving generous government funding and the shooters winning numerous medals at ISSF World Cups, Asian Games, and similar events.
Over the years, the failures of the shooters at high-profile competitions have coalesced into certain repetitive patterns that need to be analyzed and known beforehand in order to avoid a re-run at Paris. In this article, we aim to do the same.
Losing nerve at crucial moments
Abhishek Verma was hovering in the top 8 at the end of his 5th series in the qualification round of the Men’s 10m Air Pistol competition at the 2020 Olympics. Even a middling final series of 95 or 96 could have ensured his qualification. But instead the 32-year-old scored a shocking 92 which sunk him to 17th place and well out of finals contention. It was a virtual repeat of the Jitu Rai 50m Pistol performance from Rio 2016.
Abhishek’s collapse perhaps started the rout for Indian shooters for the rest of the Games as his qualification would have ensured another Indian in the final and would have meant less pressure on Saurabh Chaudhary in going for the medal. A Day 1 medal would have done wonders for the morale of the contingent. Manu Bhaker (in Qualification 2 of 10m Air Pistol Mixed) and Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar (in the prone and standing round of Men’s 50m Rifle 3P Qualifications) subsequently went on to suffer similar meltdowns in the Tokyo Olympics.
One bad final standing round of 47.5 cost Swapnil Kusale a podium place at the 2022 World Shooting Championships. Swapnil was in the top 2 throughout the match.
In the same tournament, Rhythm Sangwan was in the lead after the 3rd series in her Women’s 25m Pistol ranking round match. With only one more series to go, a spot in the medal round and an Olympic quota was within touching distance. Rhythm instead chose the worst possible time to lose composure and could not register a single point in the 4th series, gifting the quota to her opponents without a fight.
Rhythm repeated the performance in the 10m Air Pistol competition at the 2024 Asian Rifle and Pistol Championships, where again a quota was up for grabs and where again she gave up 2nd place with 9 and 8.9 in the 8th series.
That Rhythm did win a quota ultimately should not take away from the fact that her ability to shoot well under pressure is suspect despite her possessing all the requisite skills.
The same generalization can be applied to all Indian shooters in that they do well when the stakes are low but falter at crucial moments.
It is hoped that Paris-bound shooters Manu, Aishwary, Swapnil, Rhythm, and others learn from these mistakes with their coaches and make efforts to bring ‘clutchness’ to their game if they are serious about a medal.
The so-near-yet-so-far cases
Then there have been instances where the shooters themselves have given their best, but so have their opponents.
In Rio 2016, Gurpreet Singh (who finished 7th in 25m RFP) and Mairaj Ahmad Khan (who finished 9th after a tie-break in Men’s Skeet) came within a whisker of qualifying. In the same Olympics, Abhinav Bindra finished a heart-breaking 4th after a shoot-off.
More recently Mehuli Ghosh finished 10th despite shooting 629.7 in Women’s Air Rifle and Naveen finished 9th despite a 582 in Men’s Air Pistol at the 2022 World Championships.
Sometimes just one fewer inner 10 or just one marginally low series in an otherwise faultless performance can cost a finals place or a podium. When the level of competition is high, even a small mistake can make a huge difference. It is no different from Indian competitive exams!
The only Indian shooter who has managed to overcome such setbacks has been Gagan Narang. Narang narrowly missed out on finals qualification in both the 2004 and 2008 Olympics but eventually won medals at both the 2010 World Championships and London 2012.
The present lot of shooters would do well to learn from his example.
Freak events
Manu Bhaker infamously suffered from a pistol malfunction at the Tokyo Olympics. This wasn’t even the first instance of equipment failure in her career, having faced the same problem at the Munich World Cup in 2019.
Abhinav Bindra’s gun was found to be tampered with just before the 10m Air Rifle final was to begin at the 2008 Olympics, but fortunately, he had prepared for such a situation and went on to win gold. He again went on to face a similar situation in 2016.
At the star-studded Munich World Cup of 2018, a freak shot of 5.9 cost Apurvi Chandela not only the lead but also a podium finish.
Swapnil Kusale lost out on a medal after shooting a 7.6 in the last stages of the 50m 3P final at the 2022 Asian Games,
Sometimes sheer bad luck at the biggest stage – faltering equipment or a freak shot – can undo years of hard work (however why such ill luck tends to strike the Indian shooters more than say, the Chinese or the Europeans, is baffling).
Needless to say, the shooters must do regular maintenance of their equipment, take precautions against sabotage, and be wary of freak shots.
Low scores from start to finish
In all the cases mentioned above, the shooters at least had some chance of a finals spot or of a medal. But many times, Indians have given the worst performance of their careers at an Olympic or WCH competition.
Forget peaking at the right time, the Indian rifle shooters reached their absolute nadir at Tokyo 2020 with scores reading 621 and 622 in Air Rifle and 1154 in 50m 3P. Elavenil Valarivan and Aishwary Tomar are survivors from the Tokyo campaign looking to make amends in Paris.
Flameout in the Finals
Some shooters have done splendidly in qualification rounds only to ‘drop the ball’ in the finals.
Men’s 10m Air Pistol shooters have had the worst time in this respect. Indian fans watched with horror how the usually reliable Jitu Rai and Saurabh Chaudhary shot a cluster of 9s on their way to early exits from their respective finals in the 2016 and 2020 Olympics. Shiva Narwal suffered the same fate in the 2022 WCH.
Even Abhinav Bindra shot the worst final of his career at the Athens Olympics. Proper mental conditioning will be essential to avoid such meltdowns in the future.
Also, both Indians qualifying for the finals will be a great help for a medal run, with the two teammates taking the pressure off each other, as against what happened with Saurabh and Abhishek in 2021.
During this edition, the finals will be held on the next day and not the same day as the qualifications. This could be a blessing for calming the nerves of the qualifying Indians.
Those who bucked the trend
Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Abhinav Bindra, Gagan Narang, and Vijay Kumar. These four have in common not only an Olympic medal but also the rare (for an Indian shooter) ability to stay calm under pressure.
Rathore shot 135 at Athens 2004 and was placed 5th in the Double Trap qualification, and at a time when medals were determined by adding up the qualification and final scores, shot a nearly flawless 44 in the final to propel himself to silver.
Vijay Kumar withstood the challenge of World Record holder Alexei Klimov and ensured a podium finish in 25m RFP in 2012.
Bindra did not shoot a single 9 in a tremendous finals performance that got him to gold from 4th in 2008 and Narang ensured that he never lost the 3rd place in both the rounds in 2012.
All four shooters started in a calm and confident manner and were unfazed by the stiff competition posed by shooting powerhouses in China, Russia, and others.
The present lot of shooters (especially Arjun Babuta and Sandeep Singh) can take inspiration from teammate Rudrankksh Patil’s victory at the 2022 WCH.
Sift Kaur Samra and Sarabjot Singh can take heart from their composed performance at the 2023 Asiad and 2024 Munich World Cup.
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Niyati
(168 Articles Published)