Some of the country’s leading young shooters like Mampi Das and Malaika Goel will be gunning for the Youth Olympic Games quota places in the seventh Asian air gun shooting championship to be staged in Kuwait from March 9 to 12.
Mampi had won the national women’s title recently in air rifle and the 19-year-old Malaika had beaten a star-studded field in clinching the air pistol national title for women. There will be four quota places each for men in air rifle and air pistol, and it will be three each for women’s air pistol and air rifle.
The first two days of the competition will feature the men’s and women’s events, and the next two days will have junior and youth events.
The young shooters will have the option of competing in two events, and it can be juniors and youth as well. The air rifle and pistol events have been scheduled in such a way that a shooter can compete in two events. However, India will be fielding three different shooters in each of the three sections in both the men’s and women’s events.
Two of the country’s leading air rifle shooters, Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra and London Games medallist Gagan Narang will not be in the fray. Olympic silver medallist Vijay Kumar, a specialist in rapid fire pistol, who had won the air pistol bronze medal in the Guangzhou Asian Games, was unable to make the cut. — Special Correspondent
