The Why and the Why Not of Shooting

Shooting is our most successful Olympic sport after hockey, with one gold and one silver medal. In addition, Indian shooters have also won a lot of medals at the World Championship, the World Cup, the Asian Games and the Commonwealth Games. And the best part is that unlike Hockey, the sport is on an upswing with most of the success having come in the recent past. The sport is growing in popularity, helped in large part by the Olympic success.

There are fundamental reasons why we have done well in this sport and will do so in the future

Indians are naturally gifted at this sport. The biggest ingredients for success in shooting are concentration, balance, touch and perseverance – and Indians have that in aplenty. It’s a lot like chess in that sense. It does not require its practitioners to be in supreme physical shape like most other sports and that evens the playing field in India’s favour. We have declined in most sports like football and hockey, where physical fitness has become extremely important. It’s not surprising therefore that new shooters just keep coming off the assembly line

But again.

This is an expensive sport. The guns cost a lot of money and bullets are a regular drain on you wallet. And worse these things are not available in India and shooters have to depend on the govt for availability of bullets. And we all know how tardy the govt is in these matters. And that is not all – we have hardly any shooting ranges and the ones we have are archaic and ancient as compared to the ones used in international events. It’s like practising hockey on a grass field for a tournament to be played on astro-turf. Our success - in spite of all these odds is testimony to the wealth of talent that we have in our country.

If only someone could do something to make this talent really count.