Harveen, India on target despite all odds

Lack of facilities during the training camp has so far failed to demoralise the Indian shooters competing at the World University Games in Shenzhen, China.

Lack of facilities during the training camp has so far failed to demoralise the Indian shooters competing at the World University Games in Shenzhen, China. On Saturday, they won two gold medals with Harveen Sarao retaining her 10m air pistol individual title from 2007 and then teaming with Juhi Talwar and Ruby Tomar for the team gold.

HT Image

Throughout the month-long camp prior to the event, the shooters were beset with problems like shortage of pellets and sub-standard training venue.

Often they had to go for dry training in the absence of pellets. And despite of the availability of the Karni Singh Ranges, a venue for the CWG, the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) preferred the sub-standard Hansraj College range for the camp. But these hurdles did not deter the shooters.

Harveen passes test
Harveen faced one of the toughest finals line-up in her career. It included current world number one from Serbia, 2004 Athens Olympic gold medallist and current world cup champion from Ukraine, 2008 Beijing Olympic finalist from Thailand. But the Patiala shooter kept her nerve and after making it to the final at number one position with 388 points, she eventually went on to win the gold with 487.2 (388 + 99.2) points.

"In the 2007 edition too, I defeated Olympic champion Olena Kostevych. But at that time I was not aware of her achievements, so there was no pressure on me. This time, I was very much aware of all the top guns competing with me. In fact, Olena had a wonderful season by winning gold in all the four world cups of the year, so there was a little pressure. But I think I was able to perform well because of that," said an elated Harveen from China.