Shotgun World Championship gets underway in Russia

India will have three shooters each in the three disciplines of trap, double trap, skeet for men and women.

The International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) ‘live stream’’ channel apart from its facebook page will provide free coverage of all the finals. (Representative Image)

India will field a full-fledged 30-member squad for the Shotgun World Championship to be staged in Moscow, Russia, from Thursday.

With half the number competing in the junior events, India will have three shooters each in the three disciplines of trap, double trap, skeet for men and women.

For the first time,  the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) in collaboration with the organisers and the European Broadcasting Union has made arrangements for ‘’live’’ telecast of the competition all over the world.

Moreover, the ISSF ‘live stream’’ channel apart from its facebook page will provide free coverage of all the finals.

After restructuring its events to strike gender parity as directed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), with the introduction of mixed team events in pistol, rifle and shotgun, the ISSF has made a concerted effort to make the sport more popular through television and social media.

There will be a total of 640 shooters from 76 countries. Men’s trap is expected to have the maximum number of entries of 149 from 63 countries. It will be followed by men’s skeet with 124 shooters from 52 nations. The women’s trap and skeet events will have 68 and 65 participants respectively.

The double trap, which has been dropped from the Olympics for Tokyo 2020, will have 39 entries for men, 15 for junior men, and 10 for women. India possibly missed its chance of double trap medals by restraining itself from competing in the event, unless there is a
change of mind and provision at the venue as the women trap shooters double up for double trap generally.

After pre-event training on Thursday, the competition will open with trap on the first three days, followed by mixed trap on the fourth day and double trap on September 5. After a day’s training it will be skeet from 7 to 9, followed by the mixed skeet event as the conclusion on September 10.

The first shotgun medal, a trap silver, was won by Dr. Karni Singh in the World Championship in Cairo in 1962. He was followed, among the Indian shotgun shooters, by Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore with the double trap bronze in 2003 in Nicosia. Manavjit Singh Sandhu had won the trap gold in the World Championship in 2006 in Zagreb. Asher Noria won the gold and bronze in junior double trap in 2010 (Munich) and 2011 (Belgrade) respectively.

The team:

Men: Trap: Kynan Chenai, Zoravar Singh Sandhu, Birendeep Sodhi.

Juniors: Lakshay, Manavaditya Singh Rathore, Akash Saharan,

Double trap: Sangram Dahiya, Ankur Mittal, Mohd. Asab.

Juniors: Shapath Bharadwaj, Ahvar Rizvi, Shardul Vihan.

Skeet: Angad Vir Singh Bajwa, Mairaj Ahmad Khan, Sheeraz Sheikh.

Juniors: Arjun Singh Mann, Anant Jeet Singh Naruka, Hamza Sheikh.


Women:

Trap: Rajeshwari Kumari, Shreyasi Singh, Seema Tomar.

Juniors: Soumya Gupta, Manisha Keer, Nivetha Nenthirasigamani,

Skeet: Maheshwari Chauhan, Rashmmi Rathore, Saniya Sheikh.

Juniors: Simranpreet Kaur, Areeba Khan, Ganemat Sekhon.