Top shooters including Manu Bhaker, Divyansh Singh Panwar, Yashaswini Singh Deswal, Anish Bhanwala, Shahzar Rizvi, Amanpreet Singh, Veronika Major (Hungary), Etienne Germond (France), Martin Strempfl (Austria), Daria Sirotkina (Russia) among others will be seen in action while Olympic bronze medallist Gagan Narang will be the special guest at the biggest ever International Online Shooting Championship.
Shooters from India, Russia, England, Scotland, France, Austria, Hungary, Spain, Tajikistan, Latvia and Montenegro will be seen in action on Saturday.
After the success of the first two editions of the International Online Shooting Championship, former India shooter Shimon Sharif is stretching the third edition to include up to 100 participants, double the number of shooters from the previous editions.
Olympic quota winner in women’s 10m air pistol Yashaswini and promising youngster Ayushi Poddar, who was in the team for the now-cancelled Delhi World Cup, will participate for the first time in the online shooting meet. There will additionally be new participants from countries like Russia, Latvia and Montenegro.
The championship will be played on May 9. Like in the first two editions, shooters will participate in the championship by logging on to the Zoom platform from their respective locations and shoot at electronic targets set up in their houses, the screen for which will be shared for the scores to be marked.
The competition will be streamed live on the Facebook page of indianshooting.com.
The nationwide lockdown in India has been extended to May 17 and Shimon said the plan is to hold the championship once every 15 days until the situation returns to normalcy. Shimon has largely succeeded in incorporating every possible real-life element to make the tournament as interesting and competitive as possible.
An electronic target setup, beside a mobile phone with internet connection, is all the shooters require to compete in the championship. While the inaugural edition featured only the qualifications, Sharif included a 24-shot final for both 10m air rifle and 10m air pistol events in the second championship.
After the COVID-19 pandemic led to either cancellation or postponement of all shooting events, including the ISSF World Cups, the online championship has generated a good amount of interest.
