Sift on target with career choice

Sift Kaur Samra has scaled the peak of a gruelling shooting event -- 50m rifle three positions -- at a pace few would have imagined. In 2021, she broke into the India junior team and competed at the junior world championships in Peru. Last year, she was in the senior world championships in Cairo. This year, she had already earned a Paris Olympics quota spot for India, before nailing an Asian Games individual gold and team silver medal with a world record to boot.

- Avishek Roy 

Samra made it look easy at the Fuyang Yinhu Sports Centre on Wednesday, firing high 10s for a dominating performance. Such was her level that China’s world champion Zhang Qiongyue, who won silver, fell way behind. Samra shot a world record 469.6 while Zhang could shoot only 462.3, the gap showing how the young Indian was in a match of her own. China seems to be a happy hunting ground for Samra. Last month, she won gold at the World University Games in Chengdu.

“The experience of competing against Chinese players in Chengdu was a big help. There, me and Ashi (Chouksey) had gold and silver, and now we have gold and bronze. It’s a very good feeling,” Samra said.

“My standing (position) is strong so I knew if I take the lead in prone, I can do very well. In the first round, my score was not that good in the first five shots. But I saw others were also not doing well, so I focused on getting better scores. I did not know I was chasing the world record, but the gold medal was in my sight.”

It was the first individual gold won by an Indian rifle shooter in the Asian Games. And it has come incredibly fast in a gruelling discipline that requires shooters to take aim from three positions -- kneeling, prone and standing. Considering that the 22-year-old took up the event only in 2019, having started with air rifle in 2016-17, it is a great achievement.