Olympic core group shooters to undergo another national camp in January

The core group of Indian shooters for the Tokyo Olympics will practice together again at a national camp organised by the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) in late January.

The NRAI, the governing body of Indian shooting, announced that a national camp for the core group will be held from January 26 to February 7 at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range in New Delhi, according to The New Indian Express.

The core group will be put up at a hotel near the shooting range and have to report to the hotel on January 20, following which they will undergo a six-day quarantine before joining the national camp.

New Delhi-based shooters, though, are allowed to isolate at home and directly join the camp on January 26 if they choose to do so. The participants, including shooters and coaches, will undergo COVID tests and be in a bio-bubble for the duration of the camp.

There are 32 Indian shooters included in the core group for the Olympics, which includes the 15 who have already secured quota places for Tokyo along with the reserves.

It includes the likes of promising youngsters Divyansh Singh Panwar, Saurabh Chaudhary, Manu Bhaker, and Elavenil Valarivan. However, there are no trap shooters or women’s skeet shooters as they have not yet earned an Olympic quota.

Most of the core group will be seen in action at the national trials, which will begin on January 5 and end on January 18, to select the Indian shooters’ squad for the upcoming 2021 season.

The season’s first combined ISSF World Cup will be held in New Delhi on March 18, followed by another in South Korea in April. The squads for the prestigious World Cup events will likely be decided by another round of trials in February.

Indian shooters’ core group for Tokyo Olympics

Men shooters

50m Rifle 3P: Aishwarya Pratap Singh, Parul Kumar, Sanjeev Rajput, Swapnil Kusale

10m Air Rifle: Deepak Kumar, Divyansh Singh Panwar, Pankaj Singh, Sandeep Singh

25m Rapid Fire Pistol: Anish Bhanwala, Vijayveer Singh

10m Air Pistol: Abhishek Verma, Om Prakash Mitharwal, Saurabh Chaudhary, Shahzar Rizvi

Skeet: Angad Bajwa, Gurjot Singh, Mairaj Ahmad Khan, Sheeraz Sheikh

Women shooters

50m Rifle 3P: Anjum Moudgil, Gaayathri N, Sunidhi Chauhan, Tejawini Sawant

10m Air Rifle: Anjum Moudgil, Apurvi Chandela, Elavenil Valarivan, Shreya Agarwal

25m Pistol: Abhidnya Patil, Chinki Yadav, Manu Bhaker, Rahi Sarnobat

10m Air Pistol: Anuraj Singh, Esha Singh, Manu Bhaker, Yashaswini Singh

Lead Photo: ISSF