Paris Olympics quota spots up for grabs at Baku shooting Worlds | Sport-others News

A 51-member Indian shooting team will take part in the 2023 Baku World Championships starting Thursday with names from Tokyo 2020 like Divyansh Singh Panwar, Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar and Manu Bhaker headlining the group.
These World Championships come at a crucial time for Indian shooting with the 2024 Paris Olympics beginning in just under a year’s time. As of now, India has three quota spots for the Games, and these World Championships come with an opportunity for the shooters to guarantee an Indian name at their particular event in the French capital. At Baku, 12 Olympic events are being conducted with 48 Paris Olympic quotas up for grabs.
The team has seen familiar faces making a return as well as some surprising decisions the shooting federation – chief among which were that Paris Games quota winners from the 2022 ISSF World Championships in Rudrankksh Patil and Swapnil Kusale and 50m rifle three positions regular Anjum Moudgil would not be a part of the Baku Worlds.
Both Patil (10m air rifle) and Kusale (50m 3 positions) were not chosen because they had already won India a quota. Since an athlete can only win one Paris Olympic quota, it was decided the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) to send different shooters to Baku.
On one hand, this decision allows India to vie for their final remaining quota in both the 10m air rifle and the 50m rifle three position events, but on the other, there are very few competitions where elite shooters compete together and the Worlds could have been an opportunity for someone like Patil to gain essential experience, much like he did last year when he became the only Indian after Abhinav Bindra to win a gold medal in the 10m air rifle at the World Championships.
Anjum, a silver medall at the 2018 World Championship and a mainstay of the Indian team, was also not selected for these World Championships with the women’s 50m three position team comprising Sift Kaur Samra, Ashi Chouksey and Manini Kaushik. National coach Manoj Kumar told The Indian Express that Anjum’s omission was down to a very tough battle domestically between multiple shooters.
“The NRAI has policies and players are selected based on the policies. In the last one-two matches, Anjum’s form dipped slightly. It’s quite competitive in the women’s 50m rifle three positions, with anyone in the Top 6 a possibility to qualify for the big tournaments. But I feel that she’ll be back in the team soon,” said Kumar.
Lighting troubles
While the rifle team has experience and form going for them, the pol team has scoped out the Baku range from previous competitions and practised for these World Championships in a unique manner. When the team was in Azerbaijan in May for the World Cup, they noticed that the shooting arena lighting was different as compared to other ranges around the world.
“The lighting here was a little peculiar. Normally in a 25m range, you have natural lighting since it’s a natural range. But this range has been made more like an indoor arena so where the shooter is standing, there is a lot of artificial lighting. But the target doesn’t have any light and there’s an imbalance. When you’re aiming at the target, the glare of the light causes problems,” 25m pol coach Ronak Pandit told The Indian Express.
When the team came back from Baku, they trained at New Delhi’s Dr Karni Singh Shooting range shutting off the halogen lights on the targets and having lights over the pol shooters’ heads. They then chose to shoot at dusk around 6:30PM. The idea was to simulate the conditions at Baku, even though the pressure of the World Championships is hard to manufacture.
Amongst pol shooters, Esha Singh will be participating in the 10m air pol, the 25m air pol as well as the 10m air pol mixed team events. This will be her first World Championship as a senior. At last year’s event, the Hyderabad native had won two gold medals and a bronze in the Junior World Championships. It was through the trials that she made it to the Worlds team this year.
“She has participated in trials the same way everyone else has. Last time, Manu (Bhaker) was at the top in both events (10m and 25m air pol), this time Esha is. She has proven herself time and again. For me, Samaresh Jung (10m air pol coach) and (foreign coach) Munkhbayar Dorjsuren, now it’s a matter of coordinating and balancing out training since in pol shooting, the 10m and 25m events are complementary. Your format may change, but the basic fundamentals of shooting in both remain the same,” said Pandit.
Esha will be a part of India’s Day 1 at the Baku Worlds with the men’s and women’s 10m air pol events taking place on Thursday. Then on Friday, she’ll be a part of the 10m air pol mixed team and lastly on Sunday, will take part in the 25m air pol event.