Baku World Championship: Indian shooters start campaign with sights on Olympic quotas

Among the 53-member Indian contingent, 34 shooters will be participating in the 15 Olympic events while 19 will compete in non-Olympic events

New Delhi: The Indian national shooting squad begins its campaign in the sport’s blue-riband event of the year, the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Championships All Events, which officially begins in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Monday and runs till September 1.

Among the 53-member Indian contingent, 34 shooters will be participating in the 15 Olympic events while 19 will compete in non-Olympic events. The quadrennial showpiece is held at par or higher with the Olympics by the shooting fraternity and this edition has the added attraction of providing 48 Olympics quota places for Paris 2024, which will be won in basically seven days between August 17-24.

---

A first batch of 18 Indian shooters and 17 officials and support staff have already arrived in Baku and have begun training. While the shotgun shooters had an 11-day camp in Italy, the rifle and pistol shooters had an eight-day national camp in Delhi ahead of the event.

India have won three Paris quotas so far and are looking to better their previous best of 15 quotas, which they won for the Tokyo 2020 games. Rudrankksh Balasaheb Patil in Men’s 10m Air Rifle, Swapnil Suresh Kusale in Men’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions (3P) and Bhowneesh Mendiratta in Men’s Trap are the three quota winners for India so far.

Among the Tokyo Olympians, Divyansh Singh Panwar, Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, Manu Bhaker and Angad Vir Singh Bajwa have made the cut, while Rio 2016 Olympian Kynan Chenai, is also part of the Men’s Trap squad.

Also, part of the Men’s Trap squad is 46-year-old Zoravar Singh Sandhu, who first shot in a world championship 25 years ago. Close to 1250 athletes from over 100 nations have entered to take part in the Baku World Championships and India would do well to maximise their medals and quotas from the tournament, given a young and inexperienced side with an overwhelming majority of the squad competing at a senior event of this scale and quality, for the very first time.