Nagoya, Sep 25 A malfunctioning match button on his firing station disrupted Aishwary Pratap Singh’s concentration at a crucial stage of the 50m rifle 3-position final, costing the Indian valuable points in prone and derailing his bid for an individual medal at the Asian Games here on Friday.
Aishwary was sitting comfortably in fourth-fifth position after a strong kneeling series and appeared well placed to challenge for a podium finish when the problem surfaced as he began his prone sighters.
Unable to operate the match button properly, he had to turn away from the firing line and alert the match referee, breaking the rhythm he had built in the opening stage of the final.
Aishwary finished fifth in the competition as Chinese Olympic gold medallists took the top two podium spots.
“My shooting in kneeling position was good and score-wise also my ranking was good. I think I was in fourth or fifth position. But when the prone started and I began taking my sighter shots, my match button had a malfunction and I was having trouble pressing it, so I had to turn back and inform the match referee that it’s not working properly,” Aishwary said.
A match button in the 50m rifle 3-position event is an electronic control at the firing point that the shooter uses to signal the range system when switching from sighter shots to official scoring shots in a particular position.
Sighter shots in shooting are trial shots fired before the competition shots begin to check environmental conditions and wind among other parameters.
The interruption proved particularly costly in a final where time, concentration and shot execution are all tightly linked.
“The final match is of 22 minutes and you have to take so many shots, then there is the pressure and so many thoughts. Amid all this, if your mind gets disturbed or wavers then……,” he said.
“I had to turn back to inform the referee and that affected my prone scores. They (scores) took a massive hit because I shot a series of 102.9. Had I not got stuck in this issue, I would easily have had a series of 104.0 or more.”
That lapse pushed Aishwary down the order and left him with too much ground to recover.
The 25-year-old was eventually eliminated on the 32nd shot of the 35-shot final, finishing fifth and missing out on an individual medal despite having entered the competition as one of India’s strongest medal prospects.
His standing series offered some hope, but one 8.9 proved costly.
“As far as my standing position is concerned, it’s not in the best form right now. Still, I did very well in standing but for the 8.9 in one shot. Otherwise, other shots were ok,” he said.
Aishwary at least had a team silver to show for his efforts, but the result was a significant drop from his haul at the previous Asian Games in Hangzhou, where he won four medals — gold in the 50m rifle 3-position team, gold in the 10m air rifle team, silver in the individual 50m rifle 3-positions and bronze in the individual 10m air rifle event.
“Yes, a slight disappointment,” he said. “Last time I won four medals and this time I am going home with just one team medal. So that is a bit of a disappointment.”
The Indian shooter, however, will not have much time to dwell on the missed opportunity. His focus now shifts to the World Championships, followed by the bigger target of securing an Olympic quota for India.
“I’ll return home and now start focusing on that and prepare for that,” he said.
An Olympic quota, he added, carries significance beyond an individual qualification.
“It’s very important. Getting an Olympic quota for the country in itself is a big thing. The entire world’s top shooters are competing and it’s a pressure situation.”
As the senior member of an Indian trio that included Niraj Kumar and Rudrankksh Patil, Aishwary was also carrying the expectations that come with being an established international shooter.
But he did not feel that his seniority itself had added to the pressure.
“Not so much because of the fact that I was the senior pro, but yes, because of the expectations that you are representing India,” he said.
(PTI News)
