Heena sweats it out for Cup

Heena underwent an ammunition test in Fellbach, Germany, on Saturday that took nearly four hours, in a bid to fine- tune her preparations

Ace shooter Heena Sidhu is leaving no stone unturned in her preparations for the ISSF World Cup in Munich from May 22 to 29.

Heena underwent an ammunition test in Fellbach, Germany, on Saturday that took nearly four hours, in a bid to fine- tune her preparations.

“We underwent testing of 19 different batches with different velocities that were available as pistol ammunition at the Eley ammunition testing facility in Fellbach and found something that consistently offered high accuracy from the barrel of Heena’s 25m pistol,” said shooting coach Ronak Pandit.

A total of 520 shots were fired in all to find the best batch for Heena.

The batch number has been reserved for Heena and she will now be coordinating with the Eley company in the United Kingdom to import it with the financial support for the Target Olympic Podium scheme and administrative support from the National Rifle Association of India.

“We use the best ammunition, Eley Tenex, which is also the most successful ammunition brand in the world. But even in the brand there are different batch numbers which give varying accuracies.

“So despite using the best ammunition in the world, there could be variations in results with some shots say 1 in 15 which mean about 3- 4 shots in a match could be flying off as much as 6- 8mm away at 25m… That is a lot in a precision sport like shooting,” said Commonwealth Games gold medallist and former world number one Heena after the test.

Heena was happy to attend the camp in Munich where this ammunition testing facility could be availed by her and also some of her team mates.

“This testing will help get even better results from the existing technical skill levels,” she said, urging the SAI to ensure that every year top- 5 ranked shooters across rifle and pistol are sent for a special ammunition and pellet testing camps.