Shooters level serious charges against coach
NEW DELHI: Six leading women shooters of the country, including Olympians Anjali Bhagwat and Suma Shirur, have alleged that one of India’s top foreign coaches, Kazakhstan’s Stanislav Lapidus, has been seeking sexual favours from junior shooters.
The seven rifle shooters — Bhagwat, Shirur, Olympian Sanjeev Rajput, Ayonika Paul, Lajja Gauswami, Kuheli Ganguly and Tejaswini Sawant — have also said in the signed complaint addressed to the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) that the coach “is rude towards senior shooters and is partial towards a few top internationals…and continues to ignore those who are struggling”.
A senior shooter, who has signed on the complaint, told HT on condition of anonymity that a “few of the junior shooters have raised the issue (of the coach seeking sexual favours), and since we were drafting the letter, it was put there. If they (the junior shooters) are saying it, it must be true.”
The complaint follows a public spat between Bhagwat and Lapidus before the Munich World Cup in May this year when the team was training in Hannover. Bhagwat, who was shooting in the 50m three-position MQS (minimum qualification score) category reportedly exhausted the ammunition she wasn’t sanctioned to use. Lapidus reportedly reprimanded her and they had an argument. But, Bhagwat refuted the claim.
NRAI president Raninder Singh dismissed the allegations, saying though he had received the complaint, the allegations against Lapidus couldn’t be proved. “We have spoken to all the athletes who are concerned with this matter and asked them whether any such thing happened. None of them has been able to confirm verbally or in writing that any such thing happened,” Singh told HT on Wednesday.
“It is unfortunate that such a derogatory allegation has been put in such a light manner (sic),” he added. The NRAI chief, though, said that the athletes’ commission chairman, Moraad Ali Khan, had been kept in the loop regarding the complaint.
Another woman rifle shooter said, “Don’t dismiss the complaint simply because only a handful of shooters have signed it.”
Ahead of the 2012 London Olympic Games, Sanjeev Rajput and prone shooter Joydeep Karmakar had also had a major argument with Lapidus following which the national coach, Sunny Thomas, refused to forward their application for the National Sports Development Fund.