Thaindian News

New Delhi, Oct.13 (ANI): Indian shooter Tejaswini Sawant, who won a silver medal in the Commonwealth Games 50-metre prone rifle singles event, said that shooting athletes of the country needs a better managerial system.

Sawant also said that better management for sportspersons would hugely benefit the country’s performance in other sporting events.

“I feel that we have the entire infrastructure for the sport and only proper management is required for every shooter since we cannot perform well throughout the year. Only in a match or two we can give a high performance, so every shooter should think about what to do in order to perform well; it all depends upon the planning. I think that we are not lagging behind in terms of cartridges and other facilities,” Sawant said on Wednesday.

Sawant missed the gold medal by a point’s difference in the 50metres rifle prone event.

Kuheli Gangulee, Sawant’s coach, admitted the mistake in planning and said that they would see that the same is not repeated in the upcoming Asian Games.

“We definitely had a strategy but we lacked somewhere in the planning; we will do an analysis on that. We are preparing for the Asian Games and plan accordingly for it and work out the faults,” said Gangulee.

Sawant expressed happiness that the sport has picked interest in the country and gave credit to the country’s ace shooters and media.

“Since Rajvardhan Rathore and Abhinav (Bindra) have won medals in the Olympic I feel it is due to the graciousness of the media shooting has come in focus a lot. We ourselves get shocked to see the numerous entries in the national event. So, we feel that the sport is becoming really popular as so many people are opting for it,” said Sawant.

So, I feel that the popularity of the sport is not a problem now. The only drawback of the game is that it is a little expensive; the equipments are not available easily due to the security reasons in our country. People get scared on hearing the name of weapons,” she added.

Sawant has so far won a silver medal in the Women’s 50 m rifle 3 positions event (along with Lajjakumari Goswami) and a bronze in Women’s 50 m rifle prone pairs (along with Meena Kumari).

She was the first Indian woman to win a gold at the World Championship in the 50m Rifle Prone event in Germany in 2009. (ANI)