Top shooters to feature in the World Championship

Some of the leading shooters who miss out on the Asian Games, will get to compete in the World Championship to be held in Korea in September.

Gagan Narang will be competing in the rifle prone and air rifle events, and will have Olympian Chain Singh for company in prone, apart from Sanjeev Rajput who will shoot both prone and rifle 3-position events.

Some of the leading shooters who miss out on the Asian Games, will get to compete in the World Championship to be held in Korea in September.

It is basically because the Asian Games allows only two shooters per event, whereas the World Championship will have three shooters per event from a country.

Gagan Narang will be competing in the rifle prone and air rifle events, and will have Olympian Chain Singh for company in prone, apart from Sanjeev Rajput who will shoot both prone and rifle 3-position events.

Swapnil Kusale joins the 3-position team. Shreya Saksena joins both the women’s rifle 3-position and prone events, while former world champion Tejaswini Sawant also gets into the prone event, which is not part of the schedule in the Asian Games. The women’s air rifle team will have Apurvi Chandela, Mehuli Ghosh and Anjum Moudgil. Elavenil Valarivan who will be shooting the Asian Games with Apurvi in air rifle, is missing from the World Championship.

She may possibly be shooting the junior events, the team for which has not been announced yet.

Heena Sidhu and Manu Bhaker are set to compete in both the air pistol and sports pistol events and will have Shweta Singh and Rahi Sarnobat for company in the events in that order.

Olympic silver medallist Vijay Kumar misses out on a berth in rapid fire pistol, but makes the team in standard pistol and centre fire pistol. Gurpreet Singh who placed seventh in the Rio Olympics will shoot both rapid fire pistol and standard pistol.

While the top two shooters in the men’s section will partner the correspondingly ranked women shooters for the mixed events in trap, air pistol and air rifle, the new Olympic events scheduled for Tokyo 2020, the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) has not announced the skeet and free pistol team, apart from the big bore shooters, yet.

The team

Men

Rifle: Sanjeev Rajput, Akhil Sheoran, Swapnil Kusale, Chain Singh, Gagan Narang, Ravi Kumar, Deepak Kumar.

Pistol: Abhishek Verma, Shahzar Rizvi, Om Prakash Mitharval, Shivam Shukla, Anish Bhanwala, Gurpreet Singh, Vijay Kumar, Amanpreet Singh.

Shotgun: Lakshay Sheoran, Manavjit Singh Sandhu, Zoravar Singh Sandhu, Ankur Mittal, Shardul Vihaan, Mohd Asab.

Women

Rifle: Anjum Moudgil, Gaayathri Nithyanandam, Shreya Saksena, Tejaswini Sawant,, Apurvi Chandela, Mehuli Ghosh.

Pistol: Manu Bhaker, Heeena Sidhu, Shweta Singh, Rahi Sarnobat.

Shotgun: Shreyasi Singh, Seema Tomar, Varsha Varman.