My job is fifty per cent done: Shooter Bhowneesh Mendiratta after booking India's first Paris 2024 Olympics quota
Oct 02, 2022
By Vivek Prabhakar Singh
New Delhi [India], October 2 : Indian shooter Bhowneesh Mendiratta feels that his job is "fifty per cent done" after he booked his country's first quota in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
"I am really happy. It is an achievement for the country first and then for me. It is an honour that I won the quota for the country. I need to prove my worth again and I think the job is only fifty per cent done and still there are many things to be done. I am training in a systematic way to get to the peak of my career just at the time of the Olympic Games. Let us see what happens there," Bhowneesh told ANI.
He said that his father has always been there for him since the start.
The national team coach Vikram Chopra said that the shooter shot brilliantly in his first outing where the quotas were up for grabs.
"He has made the company. We all are very very happy but still we are very happy. There are three more quotas up for grabs," he added.
Bhowneesh Mendiratta claimed India's first Paris Olympics quota spot in shooting on debut at the ISSF Shotgun World Championships taking place in Osijek, Croatia. Mendiratta claimed 4th place in overall in the men's Trap final.
Mendiratta won his ranking round with an almost perfect score of 24/25, which enabled him to qualify for the medal match and ultimately a spot in the Paris 2024 team.
His only previous senior competition was at the Changwon, Korea, World Cup, where he took home a silver medal this year. This is his first senior World Championship debut. USA's Derrick Scott Mein came through a nerve-wracking ranking match shoot-off before going on to clinch men's trap gold on Wednesday (28 September) at the 2022 ISSF World Championships Shotgun in Osijek, Croatia.
In his ranking match (semi-final round), Mein somehow missed his last three shots - but hit all five in the sudden-death tiebreak to secure his spot in the final and a qualifying quota spot at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 for USA.
The final saw Chinese Taipei's Yang Kun-pi win bronze, with the Indian youngster Bhowneesh Mendiratta, competing in his first senior World Championships, finishing fourth after being eliminated first in the final.
Great Britain, Chinese Taipei, India, and USA, therefore, join Czech Republic and Sweden in booking Paris 2024 quota spots in men's trap.
