Shooting World Cup: Indian shooters have prepared their best, says Raninder Singh

The NRAI president said the shooters have prepared well for the ISSF World Cup that begins on Friday, despite lack of international exposure for about 15 months.

The shooting Olympic quota winners of the country with the NRAI president Raninder Singh and secretary general DV Seetharama Rao at the Dr. Karni Singh Range in Delhi on Wednesday.

The president of the National Rifle Association of India, Raninder Singh, assured that all the covid protocols and safety measures were in place for the World Cup in rifle, pistol and shotgun to be staged at the Dr. Karni Singh Range, Tughlakabad, from Friday.

Addressing the media along with the Olympic quota winners on Wednesday, the NRAI president said that the Indian shooters had done exceptionally well to prepare their best for the global competition, despite lack of international exposure for about 15 months.

Of course, the men’s skeet shooters Mairaj Ahmad Khan and Angad Vir Singh Bajwa had competed in the shotgun World Cup in Egypt recently, and will be keen to step it up in tuning themselves for the Tokyo Games.

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India will have an overwhelming presence as 57 of the 294 shooters will be enjoying the home advantage. Even though many leading shooting nations would be missing owing to the international situation and travel constraints, there will be 53 countries in the fray.

The NRAI president thanked the Union government, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, apart from the Sports Authority of India (SAI) for supporting the national federation in ensuring the conduct of the global competition.

Raninder conceded that there was a lot of responsibility in hosting the event of such magnitude efficiently as there was global attention on the same, and that his team was ready for the challenge.

He also hoped that India would add another Olympic quota, the 16th, in men’s rapid fire pistol, through the world ranking system.

Quite impressively, 14 of the 15 Olympic quota winners for the country in shooting, were present at the media conference and expressed their confidence of a good fare. They were unanimous in suggesting that they had all utilised the available time judiciously in honing many aspects of their game, which was not possible in the normal course owing to a regular string of competitions at various levels.

After the pre-event training on Thursday, the World Cup will have its first set of events on Friday.