Asian Games 2014: Official apathy hits prospects of star shooters

On a day when all of India is celebrating shooter Jitu Rai's opening day gold medal at the Incheon Asian Games, this news may come as a spoilsport.

Call it callousness on the part of the Indian Olympic Association or the National Rifle Association of India, the nation's four star shooters --- Olympic silver medallist Vijay Kumar, Delhi Commonwealth Games double gold medallist Gurpreet Singh, centre fire pistol Pemba Tamang and veteran shooter Samresh Jung --- are all going to miss their official practice sessions and will be forced to go into their competition directly or will be left with little time to recover.

As reported by dna, on the eve of the Asian Games opening ceremony, 36 of the 43 Indian shooters were left stranded in India as their accreditation cards had not been made on time.

It was only after applying for fresh visas that most of the shooters reached Incheon over the last three days.

More significantly, Samresh will be landing at Incheon only late on Saturday night and will barely have time to sleep and prepare himself for his 10m air pistol event slated for Sunday morning.

Gurpreet's case may cost India at least a medal. After winning two golds in Delhi in 2010, he was expected to help India win a medal in the 25m rapid fire event here in Korea. Unfortunately, he too fell victim to the officials' apathy and would only reach the Games Village on Monday evening.

Confirming this to dna, a senior NRAI official said that he "feels bad for Gurpreet because missing official practice before the actual event could be fatal to his chances".

"He will not even have time to overcome his jet lag. Expecting a medal under such a situation would be very unfair," said a senior NRAI official on condition of anonymity.

London Games silver medallist Vijay may not have been enjoying the best of form recently, but there is a common saying that "a big player only hits bulls' eye when it matters the most".

It was after his dismal performances in Glasgow that proved to be a catalyst for his exclusion from the Rapid fire pistol event. But he is still a strong medal contender in Incheon, teaming up with Pemba and Gurpreet for the centre fire pistol event, which begins on September 26.

But it may be yet another case of bad luck for this 25m centre fire star and his event partner Pemba because they barely will get just a day to acclimatise as both are presently stranded in Delhi.

"Both Vijay and Pemba will probably reach Games Village on Wednesday night. They are currently in Spain and will be reaching Delhi either Sunday evening or Monday. It would have been ideal to send their accreditation cards by courier to Spain, so that they could have come directly to Korea from there. But you know how our system works," added the official.

In Guangzhou, India had to wait till the very last day of the shooting event for its first gold when Ronjan Sodhi saved the blushes for high-flying Indian shooters. Four years later, one can only hope that it doesn't happen here at Incheon, and that too after Jitu hit the bull's eye on the very first day of the Games.