Top Young Shooters Picked In 33-member Indian Shooting Squad For Asian Games

Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar: Top young shooters like Divyansh Singh Panwar, Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, Rudranksh Patil, Sarabjot Singh, Manu Bhaker, Rhythm Sangwan, Prithviraj Toindaman, Ganemat Sekhon and Rajeshwari Kumari have been selected in the Indian squad for upcoming Asian Games in Hangzhou, China.

The National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) has picked a 33-member Indian shooting squad that will take part in the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, beginning September 23, hoping to improve on the country's haul of 9 medals from shooting in the 2018 edition of the games held in Jakarta/Palembang in Indonesia.

The team does not include Saurabh Chaudhary, who in 2018 became the youngest Indian shooter to win a gold medal at the Asian Games, and Rahi Sarnobat, who won the other gold for India in the 2018 Games.

Meanwhile, the NRAI, the governing body for the Olympic sport of shooting in the country, also announced on Saturday a 35-member team for the Asian Championships in Changwon, Korea, coming up in October this year.

The competition assumes added importance, given a total of 24 Paris Olympics quota places are there to be won, two in each of the 12 individual Olympic events across the three disciplines of Rifle, Pistol and Shotgun, the NRAI informed in a release on Saturday.

India will be fielding entries in all 16 events, including four Mixed Team events in the Asian Championships and will also be fielding four additional shooters, Rudrankksh Patil, Mehuli Ghosh, Sift Kaur Samra and Rajeshwari Kumari, who will compete for ranking points only. The mentioned four have already secured Paris quotas and are ineligible to win quotas as a result.

The shooters have so far won seven quota places for the Paris Games and will look to pick up their first quotas in Pistol and Skeet events at the Asian Championships, besides filling their remaining berths in the Rifle and Trap disciplines.