Maharashtra’s Shahu Mane grabbed the headlines for winning a silver medal at the Youth Olympics 2018, but the young shooter did not even knew that his back pain was an issue due to his faulty shooting position, coach Suma Shirur recalled.
“He got into the squad because of pure talent. But he had major back issues and he had to go through rehab. So with him, I have worked very differently,” Shirur, the high-performance specialist coach of the Indian Junior Rifle Shooting team, said at the event to announce the 10th Lakshya Cup, a shooting tournament to be held at Karnala on December 31.
“We started in January, when I identified that he has a back ache, and he didn’t even know that he had a back ache. Looking at his stance, one day I asked ‘Shahu do you have a back-ache?’ He thought for a minute ‘ya but everyone has a back-ache.’
“That’s when we realised the magnitude of the situation and that he was shooting with a back ache. So it was faulty basic position and we had to change that a little bit. And thankfully he could win a silver at the Youth Olympics and he got a good score,” she detailed.
“It was more of rehab, also little bit of technique and little-bit equipment. With Shahu, I have not been able to go full throttle, the way I would have liked because of his physical issues, but nevertheless, as he had won the Youth Olympic quota already, my job was to prepare him at these Games,” she added.
Earlier this year, the Kolhapur shooter won India’s first medal at the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires when he bagged a silver. He shot 247.5 in the men’s 10m air rifle event on the first day of the Games to finish second behind Russia’s Grigorii Shamakov who took the gold with 249.2.