Shooting for the stars: Farmer’s son, 15, India’s new golden gun
PALEMBANG/NEWDELHI: Still not 16, Saurabh Chaudhary became an Asian shooting star when he won the 10m air pistol gold at the 18th Asian Games, his first senior international event, beating a multiple Olympic gold medallist. Abhishek Verma made it 1-3 for India, bagging the bronze in the same event.
Showing no sign of nerves, Chaudhary ’s record score of 240.7 quelled the challenge of, among others, South Korea’s redoubtable Jin Jong-oh, who has four Olympic golds, is a threetime world champion, and has three Asian Games golds. At 15 years and nine months, Chaudhary is the youngest Indian gold medallist in Asian Games history. The record previously belonged to Jaspal Rana, who was 18 years and four months when he won gold in the 25m centrefire pistol event in Hiroshima in 1994.
Chaudhary is an unlikely hero at several levels. His journey started with a borrowed weapon in Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh, and perhaps with an eye on a job in the Indian Army. That is what many in that region aspired for and the son of a homemaker mother and a father who tilled a small patch of land in the Kalina village in Meerut district was no different. That was in 2014. “Since there were two weapons at the range, shooters had to wait for their turn,” said Amit Sheoran, a former state shooter, who started his own range in 2011 to make a living, trying to exploit the spike in interest after Abhinav Bindra’s 2008 Olympic gold.
CONTINUED ON P 8 ››WOMEN’S HOCKEY TEAM BEAT KAZAKHSTAN 21-0, P15