Mihir Vasavda at Asian Games: Golden girl Sift Kaur says, ‘Having the India flag fly in China is a great experience’ | Asian-games News

Somewhere deep in the cramped, dimly-lit bowels of the sprawling Fuyang Yinhu Sports Complex, Sift Kaur Samra leans on a pillar, clutches onto her gold and silver medals and talks about career choices – a past in medicine, present in sport and a future, she hopes, in civil services.Six months ago, the rifle shooter found herself at a crossroads after winning her first senior international medal. Until then, Samra was preparing to be a doctor and was studying MBBS. But a bronze medal at the World Cup in Bhopal gave rise to lofty sporting ambitions.
“Soon after, I dropped out of MBBS,” she says. The decision to abandon a career in medicine and pursue sport – unconventional in most Indian households – was her parents’. And Samra went on with full conviction.

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📹 | Watch the excellence of @SiftKaurSamra as she bags yet another medal at the 19th #AsianGames 🤩#TeamIndia #Cheer4India #IssBaar100Paar #Shooting #Hangzhou2022 | @MEDIA_SAI pic.twitter.com/ZcDTM9kDYA
— Sony Sports Network (@SonySportsNetwk) September 27, 2023
On Wednesday, their leap of faith bore rewards.
In an event dubbed as the Test match of shooting, for its punishing nature, length of a match and unique challenges, the 22-year-old won an individual gold, and team silver and set a world record to her name with a tally of 469.6 in the final.
“Having the India flag (fly) in China is a great experience,” she says. “It’s very emotional.”
Samra’s dominant display from start to finish stood out on a day when India dominated the pol, rifle and shotgun ranges, winning seven medals in total, including two gold, two silver and three bronze medals.

Samra’s gold medal came in the 50m Rifle 3-position event, dubbed as the Test match of shooting for its length and unique challenges. She also teamed up with Ashi Chouksey, who also won an individual bronze, and Manini Kaushik for a silver.
Earlier, the 25m Pol team of Manu Bhaker, Esha Singh and Rhythm Sangwan won the team gold, which was followed up with Esha showing nerves of steel in a tense individual final, where she won a silver medal.

Across the road at the shotgun range, Anand Jeet Naruka, Angad Vir Bajwa and Gurjot Khangura won the team bronze in skeet shooting before Naruka played the ‘best match’ of his life to win an individual silver.
The medal rush at the shooting ranges took India’s overall tally to 22, with 5 gold, 7 silver and 10 bronze to be placed sixth on the medal table. More than half of India’s medals – 12 – have come from shooting, a sport that has been in the dumps after an Olympic-size disaster in Tokyo.
In the bigger picture, the team medals – which aren’t handed at the Olympics – might not mean much. But Pierre Beauchamp, Indian shooting’s high-performance director, said it was an indication of depth in each discipline.
“We are building a template for the Olympic Games,” says Beauchamp. “We have depth in all of the domains and you see it here. Team medals themselves in one thing. But when you get team medals and individual medals, that’s key.”
In this context, Samra’s gold assumes high significance.
Her day began combining with Chouksey and Kaushik to win the silver. The trio started shooting around the same time roughly five years ago but their initiation to the sport was vastly different.
Chouksey started shooting only so that she could skip the NCC lessons; Kaushik learnt the sport aiming at balloons on the terrace of her house; while Samra picked up the sport because of her cousin, also a shotgun shooter.
Of the three, Samra has looked unflappable this year.
On a hot streak having also won an Olympic quota recently, Samra woke up Wednesday morning with a ‘burning desire’ to win India’s elusive individual gold in shooting.
“That was missing and I wanted to be the first one to win an individual gold at these Games,” she says. “So I was just preparing for that.”
The 3-position event tests an athlete’s ability in kneeling, prone and standing positions. With two Chinese shooters in the fray for a medal, Samra had to begin strongly because very rarely at these Games have the home country’s shooters let a lead slip.
“I knew if we could get into the lead first, we would be able to build on it,” she says. “I am strong in standing position, so I focussed on getting the kneeling (part) right.”
Her start was wobbly, but after five shots Samra looked at the screen in front of her and realised she was still with the rest of the pack. Not willing to take the match to the final few shots, she let it rip. And the time the prone position ended – after 10 shots – Samra had built a healthy 3-point lead over her closest opponent, China’s Zhang Qiongyue.
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Sarma continued to shoot with surgeon’s precision in the final segment of the match, also her most favoured, consently getting closer to the bulls-eye while others in the field struggled to get anywhere close.
She ended with nearly seven points more than the second-placed Chinese, a kind of dominance not seen an Indian shooter so far at these Games. It would easily have been an India gold-silver but Chouksey endured a heartbreak on the final shot, where a poor 8.9 saw her concede the second position to Zhang Qiongyue.
The team silver, and the overall medal rush, however, more than made up for that disappointment.