TWO SHOOTERS of the Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU), who won bronze medals at the Doha Asian Games, returned to their unit at Mhow to a warm welcome on Monday.
Naib Subedar Vijay Kumar won bronze in the 25-m rapidfire pistol event while Havaldar Imran Hasan Khan won bronze in 50-m three-position rifle event. On their arrival, AMU Commanding Officer (CO) Col I J Peoples and other staff welcomed them and celebrated their victory in the unit office.
Talking to Hindustan Times, Nb/Sub Vijay Kumar (23), who is a native of Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh, said that he was not satisfied with his performance, as he had aimed for gold. He joined the Army as sepoy in 2001 and in a short span of service he has reached up to the rank of Nb/Sub just because of his performance in shooting resulting in out of turn promotions. He gave credit to his parents, Col Peoples and his coach Maj S V S Rajvee.
About facilities here, he said that there were less facilities earlier in terms of ammunition and weapons but after the silver medal winning performance of Lt Col Rathore at the Olympics, AMU has got good facilities.
Now they have world-class ammunition, weapons and other infrastructure for the shooters and the day is not far when the shooters from here will win the Olympic gold, which is the mission of the AMU and the Indian Army.
{{/usCountry}}Now they have world-class ammunition, weapons and other infrastructure for the shooters and the day is not far when the shooters from here will win the Olympic gold, which is the mission of the AMU and the Indian Army.
{{/usCountry}}He said that he has learnt from his shortcomings in Asiad that were responsible for not winning gold medal. He said he would improve his performance in future.
Hav Imran Hasan Khan of 17 JAK Rifles and native of a village near Bareilly is a son of a doctor. He gave credit to the Col Peoples and his coaches Lt Col A N Tiwari and Sub Charan Singh. He said that when he met the shooters of the other countries, he saw that as far the facilities are concerned, our shooters are at par with those of China, Russia but the biggest difference he noticed was greater foreign exposure given to them as compared to our shooters.
They practise in all the climatic conditions at different places throughout the year and thus give better performance in all climatic conditions.
He suggested for increase in foreign tours of our shooters so as to get the best performance in all conditions. About first victory in any international event, he said that it was in 2003 when he had won a gold and a silver.
Then he took part in South Asian Games in October this year and won three gold and one silver medal. Mission Olympic of the Indian Army was in his mind and he said that he would try and give his best in the 2008 Olympics.
He said that he was very happy as he would now get out of turn promotion and become Nb/Subedar shortly, which is a very big reward for him, as it would have taken 11 years for him to achieve this rank in normal course.
Maj Rajvee told Hindustan Times that after the victory of Nb/Sub Vijay Kumar and Hav Pemba Tamang in pistol and that also with such a high score, AMU is aiming for the Olympic quota for them. There are great prospects for these shooters of winning Olympic quota, as Jaspal Rana’s event (center fire pistol) is not an Olympic event.