The German team will miss the services of Rio 2022 World Cup winner Paul Froehlich at the 10m range on the opening day of the ISSF World Cup in Bhopal. The 29-year-old, initially named on the entry list, picked up a freak injury which meant he had to cancel his trip to India at very short notice.
“Froehlich has a back injury. So, he cannot travel. We hope it isn’t serious and that it hasn’t done much damage to the bones. We are in touch with him. He told us he was trying to get something out of the car and felt something snap,” Thomas Zerbach, Germany’s assistant coach of pistol disciplines, tells Sportstar.
To add to the woes, the contingent is here without its rifle shooters, which means Maximilian Ulbrich, the World No. 1 in men’s 10m air rifle, and arguably Deutscher Schützenbund’s (DSB) - the German Shooting Sport and Archery Federation’s - best hope for a medal at Paris 2024, will also not feature. Germany was holding back its rifle shooters for the upcoming World Cup in Lima, Peru in April. However, its Ministry of Foreign Affairs has now restricted travel to Peru in view of civil unrest in parts of that country.
That puts the DSB athletes in a tight spot as they will lose out on crucial ranking points. “We will drop points ahead of the European Games. We must reach a certain level because other countries from Europe will travel to Lima and the rankings will change. We can’t do anything about it.”
The absence of Froehlich is presently just one of the many roadblocks for the German federation. With pistol shooters Robin Walter and Michael Schwald, the duo which fetched a combined 1474 ranking points at the recently concluded 10m European Championship in Tallinn, also rested, the pressure will be immense on 34th-ranked Philipp Grimm and Matthias Joseph Holderried, whose best performance is a fifth-place finish in the men’s team event of the Osijek WC in 2021.
In the women’s 10m air pistol section, Sandra Reitz, Doreen Vennekamp and Carina Wimmer, who recently failed to climb the podium in both the individual and team events at Tallinn, will be fighting for medals. Veteran Monika Karsch and Josefin Eder, who is yet to win an ISSF medal, will play for ranking points only.
Entrance of the Madhya Pradesh State Shooting Academy in Bhopal which is hosting the ongoing ISSF World Cup. | Photo Credit: SANTADEEP DEY
Earlier on Tuesday, the team trained under the watchful eyes of national pistol coach Claudia Verdicchio Krause and Zerbach at the 10m range of the MP State Shooting Academy.
On the shooting range which wears a new look now, Zerbach said, “It looks fine. The ranges that we were at the last few times, like Cairo, were bigger. It is not so loud here. The lights are not the conventional ones because they are placed under the table and so the beam comes up and forms a shadow behind the targets. That is not normal, but it is okay. Our shooters tell us if they have good focus, it will be okay to shoot.”
Despite the setbacks, Zerbach hasn’t lost hope. “The rest of the squad is totally fit. I think we will have good results tomorrow,” he says.
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