Air Pistol shooters will be first to fire at Baku World Cup

NEW DELHI: Two gold medals, one each in the men's and women's 10m air pistol events, will highlight the opening day of competitions at the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup Rifle/Pistol in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Wednesday.

The 22-member Indian squad have their full quota of three medal contenders in each event who will look to impress ahead of what will be the squad's last international assignment before the crucial world championships in August.

While Sarabjot Singh, Shiva Narwal and Varun Tomar lead India's challenge in the men's event, Divya TS, Esha Singh and Rhythm Sangwan will vie for top finishes in the women's competition, as per a press release from the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI).

The squad arrived in two batches by Monday and has been training at the competition range over the past couple of days under the watchful eyes of high-performance director (HPD) Dr Pierre Beauchamp and foreign coaches Thomas Farnik and Munkhbayar Dorjsuren.

Speaking ahead of the year's fourth Rifle/Pistol world cup stage, team HPD Dr Beauchamp said, "It is yet another step in the journey. An opportunity to sharpen up, fine-tune, and improve our process goals. That is how I see this World Cup. Medals are always a result of a good process!"

As is the norm with ISSF Rifle/Pistol World Cup stages these days, there will be a total of 10 medal events equally spread over the next five days.

Close to 600 shooters from around 50 countries, including top names like Christian Reitz, Javad Faroughi, Damir Mikec, Anna Korakaki, Doreen Vennekamp, Yang Qian, Veronika Major, Jean Quiquampoix and others are expected to train their guns and test their competitive skills ahead of the world championships in three month's-time, where a host of Paris 2024 Olympics quota places are to be won.