Junior Shooting World Cup: Aishwarya Tomar takes bed-time shikaar tales literally, goes for medal hunt in Germany

“Being a landlord (of 50 acres of land), I own more than three guns and we would often go hunting when Aishwary was young,” recalls an emotional Veer Bahadur, who had travelled with the family to Shirdi to pay homage on Friday. “There was nobody to tell me to take up shooting competitively when I was young. But now that I’ve seen Aishwary grow up to become the junior world champion, it feels that I have become the world champion too.”

The youngest of three siblings in turn had first learned about sport shooting from a cousin, Navdeep Singh Rathore, an international shooter himself, who was also a member of the Indian team that competed at the 2010 Youth Olympics in Singapore.

It was during a visit to Rathore in Bhopal during holidays that Tomar would first attend a summer camp at the Madhya Pradesh Shooting Academy. His skill shone immediately, but for him to harness it he would have to shift base from his home over 250 kms away.

“When I was selected in the trials for the MP Shooting Academy, I knew that I had to stay away from my family,” Tomar says. “It was tough initially but I made it a point to visit the village on festivals. And I also make it a point to go to the Navgrah fair.”

The fascination for shooting never dwindled once the rigours of training started. At the Academy he had to manage his time between three different events, the 10 m air rifle, 50 m prone and the three position that he’s now starting to master. But the workload didn’t push him into a shell. Instead, he became even more curious about the sport.

By January 2018, crucially, veteran shooter Suma Shirur, who is the high performance coach of the junior India rifle team, joined the Academy in Bhopal, putting her in clear sight of the budding marksman.

“Aishwary’s biggest strength has been his focus and it helped me to coach him when I joined the academy,” says Shirur. “We would work a lot on his basics and he would always show his eagerness to compete in all the three events, which is good for a young shooter. 3P requires a lot of stamina since it goes for more than three hours. But Aishwary would never hesitate to train extra for the event.”

Fourth in qualification

On Friday, Tomar shot a score of 1171 to finish fourth in the qualification round, ten points behind top ranked Chinese shooter Changhong Zhang. In the final though, his closest rival was Hungarian teenager Zalan Pekler. He shot a score of 153.4 in the kneeling position to grab the lead after the first three series.

After the three series of prone, Tomar dropped to second place with a total of 307.2, 1.7 points behind Pekler. In the first two series of the standing position, Tomar shot scores of 49.3 and 51.1 to grab a lead he would never relinquish. Eventually, he won by 4.5 points and his finals tally of 459.3 would set a new junior world record.

Last year, at the very same World Cup, Tomar finished 30th. But the sudden jump to gold has not just given him his first international title in the junior level, he’s also caught the attention of India’s senior rifle coach Deepak Kumar Dubey.

“In the World Cups this year, where he competed in MQS category, he shot scores of 624 in 10 M Air Rifle event and it added to his exposure,” Dubey explains. “And he displayed that in the elimination round here that the standing series is his strength. The scores in kneeling and prone helped him but the way he shot under pressure in the standing elimination round was brilliant. He won by a good margin, but a single mistake could have costed him the gold.”

The only international medal Tomar had won previously was a bronze at the Asian Championships in Taiwan earlier this year. It gave him some momentum to progress further. But for Tomar, who once championed the balloon shooting stalls at the Navgrah fairs, he’s now hit the jackpot on the biggest stage on the junior international circuit.