Indian shooting squad for Asian Olympic qualifiers announced
Dec 15, 2023
New Delhi [India], December 15 : A 20-member rifle and pistol squad and a 12-member shotgun squad has been announced for the upcoming Asian Olympic qualifiers, scheduled next month in Indonesia and Kuwait respectively.
A total of 16 Paris 2024 Olympic Games quotas will be available in Jakarta, Indonesia, where the Asian Olympic Qualification Rifle and Pistol event is scheduled between January 5-18, 2024, while as many as eight Paris spots will be up for grabs in the Asia Olympic Qualification Shotgun, scheduled in Kuwait City, Kuwait, between January 12-22, 2024. The Indian Shooting Squad already has 13 quota spots won for Paris 2024 and will be looking to add to that tally in these tournaments.
The squad has been selected based on current domestic rankings and only those with quotas already to their name have been left out.
In the Jakarta event, India will be looking to particularly add to their Pistol quotas, given five more are still to be won. All the eight quota places in Rifle events have already been secured.
In Kuwait, India has six quota places to aim for all four in Skeet and a couple in Trap shooting.
Three Olympians including former men's trap world champion Manavjit Singh Sandhu, Gurpreet Singh in Pistol and Anjum Moudgil in Rifle make their comebacks into the Indian team. Among senior team debutants will be Sri Karthik Sabari Raj (men's 10m air rifle), Ujjawal Malik (men's 10m air pistol) and Bhavya Tripathi (women's trap).
Three shooters namely, Tilottama Sen (women's 10m air rifle, ranked seventh), Shriyanka Sadangi (women's 50m rifle 3 positions, ranked seventh) and Bhowneesh Mendiratta (men's trap, ranked sixth), are quota holders and not among the top three, have also been included in the squad to shoot in the RPO (ranking points only) category and will not be competing for medals. Four other quota holders expressed their inability to participate in these competitions.
