Young shooters do Lucknow proud
LUCKNOW: Young shooters from Lucknow like Samarjit Singh and Omar Zia hogged limelight in the State Championships both in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.
After almost a 10-month no training in corona time and with just one-day practice, international marksman Samarjit shot a record breaking 580/600 in air pistol to clinch a gold medal in the senior category of the 19th Uttarakhand State Shooting Championship held in Dehradun, whereas Omar, who remained the youngest shooter won a gold medal in double trap junior men’s category with 36 points at the 43rd UP State Championship held at Gonda.
Winner of 11 international medals and over 35 national medals, Samarjit remained in the national junior squad for five years. “I shot after a gap of almost one year as all ranges were closed due to the pandemic and most of my training was based on visualization,” he said.
Son of national shooter Mukuljit Singh, who also won a bronze in 0.22 rifle prone ISSF Event at Dehradun, Samarjit has to his credit a gold at the Asian Shooting Championship Tehran in 2013 and a gold in Czech Republic in 2014. He was ranked 12th at the World Championship in Grenada Spain in 2014.
Omar shot 20 and 17 in first two rounds to finish with 37 points, pushing Kanpur Nagar’s Navodit Singh, who shot 36. Besides him, Taha Saeed Jafri also from Lucknow finished top in the junior category, whereas a civil servant Umesh Singh in Lucknow Sadar won a silver medal in his category. Other shooters from Lucknow, who took part in the event, included Amit Aggarwal, Vikram, Anurudh Shukla, Jamal Asgar Rana, Billal, Faiz, Vishal Rai, Ankit Singh, Yuvraj Singh, Yashraj Singh and Anoop Singh.