The world’s top pistol and rifle shooters will descend upon the Egypt International Olympic City Shooting Range for the ISSF World Championships, set to begin on October 13.
The Cairo World Championships assume additional importance, with a total of 32 Paris 2024 Olympics quota places up for grabs, four each across the four Olympic Men’s and Women’s individual events.
An exhaustive list of 70 events, including 10 Olympic events spread among senior and junior categories are on the roster.
Shooting World Championships: India’s squads, Paris 2024 Olympic quotas available, and more
Day one of competitions has a solitary medal event, the Junior Women’s 25m Pistol Team competition, where India will be represented by Esha Singh, Naamya Kapoor and Vibhuti Bhatia. It is a six-nation field and the Indians will be hopeful of the brightest possible start with three in-form competing. China, Germany, Ukraine, Korea and the USA complete the line-up.
This Indian pistol and rifle squad has a number of new faces and many who will be playing in their first world championships, widely considered the highest level of competition in the sport by sport shooters.
The event also marks a return for Vijay Kumar, the London Olympic silver medallist, who is on a comeback trail.
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Some notable omissions from the squad that represented India at Tokyo 2020 include the likes of Saurabh Chaudhary, Abhishek Verma, Apurvi Chandela, Deepak Kumar, Sanjeev Rajput, Rahi Sarnobat (out on medical grounds) and even Divyansh Singh Panwar, who has qualified in the junior category only.
Anjum Moudgil, Manu Bhaker, Elavenil Valarivan and Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, are the surviving members from that Tokyo squad who will be seen in action in Cairo.
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Many team members, though, were part of the ISSF World Cup stage, held at the same venue in February-March this year- a competition which India topped. That experience may possibly hold them in good stead.
A total of 32 quota places have already been distributed including 16 in the recently concluded Shogtun World Championships in Osijek, Croatia, where India secured one quota in Men’s Trap through a fourth-place finish by young Bhowneesh Mendiratta. Cairo, will present the first opportunity to rifle and pistol shooters outside Europe, to win Paris quotas and all the top competitors would like to secure theirs at the first instance.