Shooting sports in India | |
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Governing body | The National Rifle Association of India |
International competitions | |
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Shooting is an important Olympic sport in India. Of India's 35 Olympic medals, four have come from shooting, including a gold by Abhinav Bindra in the 2008 Olympics. Indian shooters who have excelled at international events include Abhinav Bindra, Jaspal Rana, Jitu Rai, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Vijay Kumar, Gagan Narang, Apurvi Chandela, Ronjan Sodhi, Anjali Bhagwat, Heena Sidhu, Shreyasi Singh, Manu Bhaker, Anisa Sayyed, Rahi Sarnobat and Saurabh Chaudhary.
Shooting sports have a varied history in India. Initially they were played by royal people of British India for amusement and recreation. The highest governing body of shooting sports in India is National Rifle Association of India (NRAI), which was established on 17 April 1951. From then on India achieved some success in the Olympic games by winning a Gold. But largely this sport is not affordable to command Indians because of a lack of shooting ranges and facilities in the country. [1]
The Indian shooting contingent for the 2012 London was one of the largest to date. There were a total of 11 shooters including 4 female shooters. India's first medal in the 2012 Olympics was when Gagan Narang won the bronze in the 10m Air Rifle event. [2] This was the same event in which Abhinav Bindra won India's first individual gold medal in the 2008 Summer Olympics Beijing. The second medal came from the unheralded army man Vijay Kumar when he won the silver in the 25m rapid fire pistol event after finishing 4th in the qualification rounds. [3] He had to fend off some tough competition from the third placed Chinese Ding Feng.
A notable performance was made by Joydeep Karmakar who finished 4th in the 50m rifle prone event. A strong medal prospect Ronjan Sodhi who is an Asian Games gold medallist, however crashed out in the qualification rounds of the Double trap event. [4]
Games | Event | Name | Medal |
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2004 Athens | Men's double trap | Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore | Silver |
2008 Beijing | Men's 10m Air Rifle | Abhinav Bindra | Gold |
2012 London | Men's 10m Air Rifle | Gagan Narang | Bronze |
2012 London | Men's 25m Rapid Fire Pistol | Vijay Kumar | Silver |
Competition | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|
Olympics | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
World Championships | 5 | 8 | 4 | 17 |
World Cup Final | 9 | 5 | 3 | 17 |
World Cup | 51 | 40 | 40 | 131 |
Asian Games | 9 | 21 | 28 | 58 |
Commonwealth Games | 63 | 44 | 28 | 135 |
Total | 138 | 120 | 104 | 362 |
The sport is administered in India by The National Rifle Association of India. The association organises the following tournaments every year:
India first participated at the Olympic Games in 1900, with a lone athlete Norman Pritchard winning two medals – both silver – in athletics and became the first Asian nation to win an Olympic medal. The nation first sent a team to the Summer Olympic Games in 1920 and has participated in every Summer Games since then. India has also competed at several Winter Olympic Games beginning in 1964. Indian athletes have won 35 medals, all at the Summer Games. For a period of time, the Indian Men's Field Hockey Team was dominant in Olympic competition, winning eleven medals in twelve Olympics between 1928 and 1980. The run included eight gold medals of which six were won consecutively from 1928 to 1956.
Gagan Narang is an Indian sport shooter, supported by the Olympic Gold Quest. He won the bronze medal in the Men's 10 m Air Rifle Event at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London with a final score of 701.1 on 30 July 2012.
Abhinav Apjit Bindra is an Indian Olympic gold medallist, retired sport shooter, and businessman. He is the first and one of only two Indians to win an Individual Olympic Gold Medal. He is the first Indian to have held concurrently the world and Olympic titles for the men's 10-meter air rifle event, having earned those honors at the 2008 Summer Olympics and the 2006 ISSF World Shooting Championships. Bindra has also won seven medals at the Commonwealth Games and three medals at the Asian Games.
Mittal Champions Trust was a trust which supported Indian athletes with world-beating potential. It was funded by Lakshmi Mittal and was initiated by his son-in-law Amit Bhatia.
India competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, from 27 July to 12 August 2012. A total of 83 athletes, 60 men and 23 women, competed in 13 sports. Men's field hockey was the only team-based sport in which India had its representation in these Olympic Games. India also marked its Olympic return in weightlifting, after the International Weightlifting Federation imposed a two-year suspension for the nation's athletes in Beijing because of a doping scandal.
Asher Noria is an Indian shooter. He has won several national and international medals for India. He is the only shooter in the world who has won the double trap event of the International Shooting Junior World Cup for two consecutive years.
The National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) was founded in 1951 with a view to promote and popularize the shooting sports in India. The first speaker of Lok Sabha, Sh. G.V. Mavlankar was the founder and the first president of NRAI followed by Sh. Govind Vallabh Pant, Sh. Lal Bahadur Shastri, Sh. Y. B. Chauhan, Sh. G.S. Dhillon and Sh. Joginder Singh. Sh. Raninder Singh has served as president since December 2010.
Ronjan Sodhi is an Indian Double trap shooter. He won two silver medals at the 2010 Commonwealth Games and a gold medal at the 2010 Asian Games. In 2011, he became first Indian to successfully defend a World Cup title. He is also a recipient of the Arjuna Award and Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award (2013).
James Charles Huckle is an English sport shooter, who represented Great Britain at the 2012 Summer Olympics. He won three gold medals at the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games in India and at the 2010 Commonwealth Games he won a total of four medals, two silver and two bronze.
Jonathan Hammond is a British sport shooter, who has competed for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games and Great Britain at the Olympics. He is currently the head coach of the rifle team at the West Virginia University.
The Men's 10 metre air rifle event at the 2012 Olympic Games took place on 30 July 2012 at the Royal Artillery Barracks.
Apurvi Singh Chandela is an Indian Shooting player who competes in the 10 metre air rifle event. She won the gold medal in the 2019 ISSF World Cup in New Delhi. She is a recipient of Arjuna award.
India competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016. Indian athletes have appeared in every edition of the Summer Olympics since 1920, although they made their official debut at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris.
Junior Warrant Officer Ravi Kumar is an Indian sport shooter. He won the bronze medal at the 2014 Asian Games at Incheon in the men's 10m air rifle team event, along with Abhinav Bindra and Sanjeev Rajput. At the 2018 Commonwealth Games, he won bronze medal in the men's 10 metre air rifle event. He is a Junior Commissioned Officer in Indian Air Force.
Rakesh Manpat is an Indian shooter from Bangalore. He completed his education from Jain University where he was in the junior division of NCC. In 2006, at 16, he became a Junior state champion, winning all gold medals. Rakesh Manpat was ranked third behind Gagan Narang and Abhinav Bindra at the Common Wealth Games Trials 2010.
Pawan Singh is a former Indian rifle shooter and shooting coach of the Indian shooting team. He is the first and only Indian shooting official to get elected as a member of the International Shooting Sport Federation's (ISSF) Judges Committee in the General Assembly elections held in Germany in 2018. He holds the post of the Joint Secretary-General of the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI).
Esha Singh is an Indian amateur shooter. She became the national champion in the 10m Air Pistol category in 2018 in 2018. She won silver medal at Junior World Cup at Suhl, Germany in 2019, two gold medals at Asian Junior Championships in 10m Air Pistol Women (AP60W) and 10m Air Pistol Mixed Team (APMIX). Besides 10m Air Pistol, she also competes in 25m Standard Pistol and 25m Pistol events. She won the Gold medal in the 25m Pistol team event for India and an individual silver medal in the 25m Pistol event at the Asian Games 2022 held at Gangzhou, China.
Dhanush Srikanth is an Indian deaf sports shooter. He made his Deaflympic debut at the age of 19 representing India at the 2021 Summer Deaflympics. Despite his deafness, he has been competing in Indian shooting circuit and has been regarded as one of the regular faces in Indian shooting fraternity. He is currently coached by former Indian sports shooter Gagan Narang at the Guns for Glory Shooting Academy in Hyderabad.
Yuvika Tomar is an Indian sport shooter. She won the gold medal in the 2022 National Games of India in the 10 M Air Pistol. She is the first female shooter representing her state to win a gold medal at the National games. She received many medals and awards while representing India as an international shooter. In 2019 at Doha (Qatar) she represented India as a junior woman shooter and received a silver medal in Asian Shooting Championship, an event of ISSF.