Rifle shooter Varshaa holds nerve to clinch gold medal
PUNE: Tamil Nadu’s G Varshaa pursued psychology in her graduation because she loved the subject, but little did she know that it will have a profound impact on her other love – shooting.
“I was an introvert. I would often get impacted by the opinions and voices around me. But psychology helped me learn new techniques to maintain concentration,” Varshaa said.
That she has imbibed the concentration techniques quite well was evident in the U-21 50m rifle 3 positions final at the Khelo India Youth Games here on Wednesday. After the first two sets of the final, Varshaa (302.3) trailed topplaced Shirin Godara (305.1) of Haryana by 2.8 points. The difference may not look huge but in shooting parlance it can be quite a ground to cover. Under pressure, Varshaa maintained her composure and the opening right in the third set.
With Shirin scoring 45.1 and 47.2, Varshaa sensed a chance and took it. The latter shot 48.5 and 48.0 to take her total to 398.8, while the former trailed at 397.4. Having taken the lead, Varshaa did not take one false step to claim gold with 447.1 points.
Shirin after faltering in the third set could not recover and finished in second place with 443.3 points. The bronze went to West Bengal’s Ayushi Podder (432.8 points). “I was not expecting the gold medal. I was more focussed on getting a good score. After every shot I don’t look at the scoreboard, it helps me focus on my technique,” said Varshaa, who is currently pursuing M. Com in International Business.
“I had to leave psychology despite loving the subject as I had to stay in college more. It would have impacted my shooting,” added the 20-year-old, who will next participate in the senior selection trials for a chance to get into the senior national team.
ANMOL, PRIYA CAUSE MAJOR UPSET
Haryana’s Anmol Jain and Priya Raghav’s case was different in the mixed team event of the U-21 10m air pistol event. With no individual gold medals so far, the odds were stacked against them especially with the likes of U-21 air pistol gold medallists Esha Singh (Uttar Pradesh), Arjun Singh Cheema (Punjab) in other teams.
Anmol, who had won a gold at the ISSF Junior Shooting World Cup in Sydney in March, 2018, was the senior of the partners and let Priya take the first shots. It was all going fine as they took a healthy lead. The blip came in the fourth set as Priya shot 6.1 with Haryana at the risk of losing their lead. At that point, they were on 331.1 while Uttar Pradesh came up to 328.2. But Anmol used all his experience to negate the poor shot from there on to take home the team gold with 464.9 points.