Tokyo Olympics: Indian shooters look to Rahi Sarnobhat, Manu Bhaker for redemption

Battered by poor results and a revelation of
factionalism between coaches, India’s shooting contingent at the Tokyo Olympics
will be putting its hopes on Rahi Sarnobhat for a reboot while hoping that Manu
Bhaker rediscovers her form in the women’s 25m pistol event on Thursday,
according to PTI.

India’s shooters were the country’s best medal hopefuls
before the Olympics were underway. However, another poor performance on Tuesday
put them out in the qualifiers of the mixed team events in both pistol and
rifle.

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The Saurabh Chaudhary-Manu Bhaker duo failed to
qualify for the final of the 10m air pistol mixed event, finishing last in the
second qualification round even after topping the first phase at the Asaka
range.

Meanwhile, Abhishek Verma and Yashaswini Singh, the
other Indian team at the event, failed to clear the first qualifying round and
finished 17th.

Worse still, the rifle duo of Elavenil Valarivan and
Divyansh Singh Panwar finished 12th while Anjam Moudgil and Deepak Kumar ended
18th out of 29 teams.

The performances of India’s pistol and rifle shooters
were disappointing even in the individual events. Further, the shooting
contingent’s morale suffered a hit when it was revealed that there were
tensions between pistol coaches of the team. Federation president Raninder
Singh’s promise of a coaching staff overhaul after the games added to the
chaos.

The lifelines available to the Indian shooting
contingent are in the form of Sarnobhat and Manu Bhaker.

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Nineteen-year-old Bhaker will get one last chance to
prove her mettle at the Tokyo Olympics on Thursday.

Sarnobhat, fresh from an ISSF World Cup stage gold in
Osijek, Croatia, leading up to the games and Bhaker will have to go through two
rounds of qualification on Thursday and Friday, before the top eight are
separated after the second rapid fire round.

The 15-member Indian shooting contingent has six more
starts in the Games.