Olympics: Shooters have final training session before Tokyo flight

Mumbai, July 15 With their departure for Tokyo set for Friday, the Indian shooters had a rigorous training session in Zagreb, Croatia. The shooters, who had failed miserably and returned empty handed from Rio Olympics, are expected to win a few medals for India as their performance has been impressive in the last two three years.

It was a lengthy session taking up the entire morning as the shooters did their stuff one final time before they leave Croatia for Japan.

The shooters have been in Croatia since the middle of June and though they were expected to return home before leaving for Tokyo, decided to extend their stay to avoid the extra quarantine ordered for India and 13 other countries, if their athletes were reaching Japan from home country. India has a record number of participants in Tokyo this time 15.

The extra quarantine was not applicable for all those that have spent 14 days or more in a foreign country and were reaching Tokyo directly.

The shooters, who had competed in a World Cup in Croatia during the camp, utilised the final day of training to put the final touches on their work. The Sports Authority of India (SAI) released some photographs and videos of their final training session in Zagreb on Thursday.

Among those who trained on Thursday were pistol shooters Rahi Sarnobat and Manu Bhaker.

Rahi, the Asian Games gold medallist, won a gold medal in 25m pistol event at the ISSF World Cup in Osijek, Croatia. That would have given the shooter from Kolhapur plenty of confidence ahead of the Olympics.

Sarnobat had also won a bronze in the 10m pistol team event along with Yashaswini Singh Deswal and Manu Bhaker. Though that event is not part of the Olympics programme, all three pistol shooters came up with good scores.

The 50 metre 3-position shooters Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar and Tejaswini Sawant also made the most of this opportunity before they leave for Tokyo as did rifle shooter Divyansh Singh Panwar and pistol ace Saurabh Chaudhary.