The International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Championships All Events, the sport’s premier competition of the year, officially kicks off in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Monday and runs until September 1. The Indian national shooting team launches its campaign there.
34 shooters will compete in the 15 Olympic events out of the 53-person Indian delegation, while 19 will do so in non-Olympic competitions.
The shooting community holds the quadrennial extravaganza on par with or even higher than the Olympics, and this year’s competition has the added draw of offering 48 Olympic quota spots for Paris 2024, which will be decided in essentially seven days between August 17 and 24.
18 Indian shooters from the first batch, together with 17 officials and support staff, have already arrived in Baku and have started their training. Prior to the competition, the shotgun shooters trained for 11 days in Italy, while the rifle and pistol shooters trained for 8 days in Delhi.
India has already secured three quotas in Paris and is aiming to beat their previous record of 15 quotas, which they achieved for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
The three quota winners for India thus far are Rudrankksh Balasaheb Patil in the Men’s 10m Air Rifle, Swapnil Suresh Kusale in the Men’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions (3P), and Bhowneesh Mendiratta in the Men’s Trap.
In addition to Rio 2016 Olympian Kynan Chenai, the Men’s Trap squad also includes Tokyo Olympians Divyansh Singh Panwar, Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, Manu Bhaker, and Angad Vir Singh Bajwa. In addition, 46-year-old Zoravar Singh Sandhu, who shot for the first time in a global championship 25 years ago, is a member of the Men’s Trap team.
The Baku World Championships have attracted close to 1250 athletes from over 100 countries, and given that India’s team is young and inexperienced and that the vast majority of its members are competing at senior competitions of this calibre and scale for the first time, they would do well to maximise their medal and quota haul from the competition.
-IANS
