Ill-prepared India cancels major international shooting event

In an embarrassing blow to India ahead of next October’s Commonwealth Games, the first-ever pistol and rifle World Cup to come here has been cancelled, reports AjaiMasand.

In an embarrassing blow to India ahead of next October’s Commonwealth Games, the first-ever pistol and rifle World Cup to come

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here has been cancelled.

The World Cup was scheduled for March 2010.

A bald statement on the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) website stated: “The 2010 ISSF World Cup in New Delhi has been cancelled. The organising committee of the New Delhi World Cup Stage withdrew its application in an official communication to the ISSF….the organisers in New Delhi revised their availability to host the competition.”

India officially told the ISSF it would not host the World Cup because they were upset that a new ruling meant there would be no Olympic quota places (for the 2012 London Olympics), which was up for grabs this March. So they saw no point in staging a World Cup.

But top shooting federation officials told HT that India withdrew to save face. National Rifle Association of India secretary-general, Baljeet Singh Sethi, said with construction work at the Karni Singh Ranges “way behind schedule”, they couldn’t take a chance.

“We’ve saved the country a much bigger embarrassment,” he said. “The ISSF was putting pressure to send out circulars to participants but with the Ranges nowhere near completion, we couldn’t have risked it. We saw a ray of hope in the latest Olympic committee ruling that the Delhi World Cup would not have any Olympic quota places for the 2012 Games. So we immediately wrote to the ISSF to cancel the event.”