ISSF WORLD CUP

Sangram Dahiya's wait for medal over, coach Dradi excited about future

dahiya-issf-silver-twitter Sangram Dahiya won his first World Cup medal in the Men's Double Trap category at the ISSF World Cup in New Delhi | Twitter

Tall, rotund Sangram Dahiya looks every bit the double trap shooter that he is. Till Friday evening, the shooter from Haryana had never won a world cup medal ever since he graduated to senior team in 2012. His shooting story had mostly been about hit and near misses when it came to winning medals at ISSF World Cups. He well and truly made up for this by winning the silver medal in the season-ending ISSF World Cup Finals currently on at New Delhi’s Dr Karni Singh Range. This was his first ever world cup and world cup final medal; the second silver in shotgun at the world cup finals after Ronjan Sodhi’s in 2012.

The ramparts of the Tughlakabad Fort, shrouded in haze, forming the picturesque backdrop to the shotgun shooting range were difficult to spot. For Dahiya, though, not so the flash targets that he took aim at. He topped the qualifying event earlier in the day scoring 144 out of 150 and then dropped a mere four shots of the 80 to seal the second spot with a 76. He was three behind People’s Republic of China’s Hu Binyuan, who hit a near perfect final round of 79 out of 80 clay targets and created a world record.

Raising his arms in jubilation, he yelled out a winning cry at his father sitting in the galleries. It's been a hard journey, but Dahiya was a happy man today. “I have been chasing a medal for a long time. I'm very happy with the result. I made some promising changes in my technique two weeks back and that has paid off.”

On pressures of playing in a world cup final, Dahiya, who had confessed to having butterflies in the stomach before the tournament, said rather nonchalantly, “All nerves after qualifying round.” He credited the work that he put in with shotgun foreign coach Marcello Dradi as the reason his shooting was more consistent this year.

Italian Dradi has groomed generations of trap shooters from India―from a teenaged Ronjan Sodhi to Rajyavardhan Rathore and the current young and upcoming crop of Ankur Mittal, Shapath Bharadwaj, Manavaditya Singh and, of course, Dahiya too. He was extremely happy to see Dahiya win the medal, saying it was due given the way he was shooting. But more importantly Dradi is excited about the future of Indian shotgun shooting.

While current world no.1 Ankur Mittal finished fourth in the finals, Shapath Bharadwaj could not qualify for the finals.

Overlooking the training of the shotgun team, Dradi feels the young crop is so promising that it will challenge the older, set trap and double trap shooters soon enough. “These boys are very disciplined in training and also off training. Their work ethic too is very good,” he said.

Dradi, emphatically feels it's time for the Indian shotgun team to be infused with fresh blood. “A little bit more time and these youngsters should be ready to take on the mantle from the established shooters.” He said that shotgun, which has a rich tradition and history in India, is currently in a state of transition.

However, former shotgun shooter and national selector Moraad Ali khan said the youngsters still needed time to mature before making the grade.

For now, the challenge is to test and prepare the younger shooters for the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games in 2018. But the double trap shooters will be directed towards either trap or skeet events as double trap is no longer going to feature in the Olympics.

Dradi observed that not many in India realise that it's technically easier for double trap shooters to switch to skeet than trap.

While Dahiya is set to switch to skeet, Shapath Bharadwaj and Ankur Mittal are reportedly looking to switch to trap event.

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Topics : #Shooting

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