Rifle shooter Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar wins gold in Cairo

“Jab Tokyo se wapis aya tha toh hum sabke liye bahut badi baat thi. Jeetna harna toh chalta rehta hai par hamare gaon se Olympics khelna bahut badi baat hai (When he came back from the Olympics, it was a great thing for the whole family. Winning and losing are part of the game but playing in the Olympics is a big thing for our village). We celebrated the feat at the wedding too. Today’s medal will give him a lot of confidence to qualify for the Paris Olympics and achieve his dream of winning a medal,” father Veer Bahadur Singh Tomar told The Indian Express.

The youngster, whose father owns more than 35 acres of land in their village Rattanpur, would first shoot with air guns at the Navgrah fair at Khargone, apart from listening to the shikar (hunting) tales from his father. Tomar would soon shift to Bhopal to train at the Madhya Pradesh Shooting Academy on the insistence of cousin Navdeep Singh Rathore. Within three years, he would win medals at the junior world championships and qualify for the Tokyo Olympics with a bronze medal in the Asian Championships in Doha in 2019.

But in Tokyo, the youngster finished 21st despite making a fine start in the kneeling and prone series. “Aishwary would tell us that people would talk as if he had done something wrong. But he along with all the family members did not see Tokyo as a failure. Post that, he spent time on losing weight and getting treatment for his back pain. We also changed his rifle and jacket and got him training for pilates to get the core strength back,” remembers Rathore.

Following Tokyo, Tomar shot a junior world record qualification score of 1185 before clinching the world junior title in Peru with a final record score of 463.4. He also won gold at the Changwon World Cup last year. “I only remember Tokyo as a learning experience for me. It gave me a chance to observe my mistakes and the motivation to get better. The weight loss and treatment of the back pain put me on the right track once again,” says Tomar.

Technical tweaks

Apart from coach Suma Shirur earlier, Tomar also trained under the Indian team’s foreign coach Thomas Farnik. The Austrian made some changes to Tomar’s technique and was watching Wednesday’s final from the team hotel in Cairo due to illness. “Unlike many Indian shooters, Aishwary was willing to accept changes. Coach Shirur too was on the same wavelength and we made some technical and positional changes in his shooting routine and method. We also helped him realise that one cannot afford to fall too far behind in a particular series under the new format,” says Farnik.

On Wednesday, Tomar topped the qualification with a combined score of 588 having shot 196, 198 and 194 in the kneeling, prone and standing series respectively. In the ranking match, he was placed sixth after the kneeling position with a score of 102.3, 1.4 points behind leader Schmirl. Tomar’s score of 104.5 in the prone position was the third best and helped him climb to the fifth spot with another Indian Akhil Sheoran placed in second spot. The standing position before the elimination saw Tomar shooting 101.5 to climb to the second spot. His second and third shots in the first standing series saw him shoot 9.2 and 9.9 before he made a comeback with 10.5 and 10.8.

The third standing series once again saw him shooting three sub-ten scores but the youngster maintained second spot with a series of 49.7. The fourth standing series saw him keeping his cool to shoot 48.4 to edge out Andreas Thum of Austria to third spot by 0.3 points and enter the gold match contest against leader Schmirl.

“Aishwary adjusted well to the windy conditions here in Cairo. He took the confidence of the prone series in the ranking match into the standing series and did not let the bad shots hamper him. He held the advantage of consistent shooting and it helped him in the gold match too,” shared India’s chief rifle coach Joydeep Karmakar.

In the gold medal match, Tomar edged out 33-year-old Tokyo Olympian Schmirl 16-6, according to the format where shooters fire a single shot each and win two points for a set. “Ek bar 10-6 ki lead bana li toh lag gaya tha ki gold medal pakka hai. (Once I got the 10-6 lead, I was sure that the gold medal was mine),” said Tomar.