Apurvi, Elavenil raring to go as shooters all set to launch India’s gold quest
NEW DELHI: India’s 10m air rifle women’s duo of Apurvi Chandela and Elavenil Valarivan and the men’s 10m air pistol pair of Saurabh Chaudhary and Abhishek Verma will kick off India’s medal hunt at the Tokyo Olympic Games on Saturday, with the four being among the best prospects to bring home medals from the quadrennial showpiece.
The experienced Apurvi and the young world No. 1 Elavenil will be up against an extremely tough field, as they look to make it to the top-eight finals field from among 49 shooters in the qualification fray.
Chaudhary and Verma will then take the field with the same intention in 10m air pistol in a 36man field.
On the eve of the contest, national rifle coach Deepali Deshpande said, “The girls are all raring to go and training today has been as planned. We are confident of a good showing tomorrow.”
Sharing his thoughts from Tokyo, pistol coach Ronak Pandit said, “Yes the boys trained for an hour today as did other members of the squad and they are all shaping up well. We are all looking forward to the start of competitions and are focused on the job ahead.”
A total of 60 shots are fired in the qualification round in an alloted time of 75 minutes, and scoring is in decimals of 10, with a 10.9 being the perfect shot.
Russian Olympic Commitee (ROC) shooter, Yulia Karimova, who is the reigning world champion in the 50m rifle 3-positions event and Chinese Taipei’s world No. 4 Lin Ying-shin will pose a formidable threats to the Indian duo.
In form shooters like Carolyne Mary Tucker of the US, Ziva Dvorsak of Slovenia, Sofia Ceccarilo of Italy, and Eszter Mezaros of Hungary will also pose a strong challenge along with the Chinese duo of Wang Luyao and Yang Qian and strong Korean shooter Eunji Kwon.
Generally a score of 630 out of a maximum possible 654 ensures qualification into the finals at this level. The Indian duo has recorded world competition bests of 633 (Apurvi) and 632.7 (Elavenil) respectively.
Apurvi also holds the finals world record in the event with a score of 252.9 to her name.
The finals are a 24-shot affair with eighth place being decided ater 12-shots and one shooter being eliminated ater every two shots thereater, till the winner is decided ater the 23rdand 24thsingle shots.
Apurvi, the three-time ISSF World Cup gold medallist, has endured a bit of a rough time in the run-up to the Games, having contracted Covid-19 and then testing negative just in time to board the flight for the Indian team’s training-cum-competition tour of Croatia. It will be her second Olympics and she will look to exorcise the Rio demons when a foot injury ended her hopes in 2016.
The 21-year-old Elavenil, world number 1 and one of India’s finest rifle shooters, will certainly fancy her chances. What could aid her is that she has been trained by Olympics medallist Gagan Narang for the past seven years.
In men’s 10m air pistol, Chaudhary and Verma have been by far the two best shooters in the world over the past three years, but the much narrower 36-man field here is fraught with danger, simply because of the presence of some legends of pistol shooting, led by Korean Jongoh Jin.
The four-time Olympic champion is also the reigning world champion and will have for company, Beijing Olympic champion Pang Wei of China, the Rio rapid fire pistol champion Christian Reitz of Germany and the Rio defending champion Hoang Xuan Vinh of Vietnam.
The Indian duo will also have to contend with the challenges of ROC athlete Artem Chernousov (world No. 3), in-form Iranian Javad Foroughi (world No. 4 and winner of the last two world cups before the Olympics), seasoned Serbian Damir Mikec, recently crowned European champion Juraj Tuzinsky of Slovakia and top Ukrainian shooters Oleh Omelchuk and Pavlo Korostylov among others.