Organizers trim shooting events at the Jakarta Asian Games
After the CWG organizers reduced the number of quota for shooters, the Asian Games have now also removed all team shooting events from their schedule. The Asiad has included the three rifle 300m positions, which is big bore event and is generally practised by Army’s Marksmen Unit shooters.
Although all the dropped events are non-Olympic events, their exclusion has hit India hard. Indian shooters have won medals in these events, especially the team events. The Asiad organisers, however, have included double trap, which was removed from the Olympics cycle recently.
India had won one gold, one silver and seven bronze medals in the last edition of the Asiad. Out of these nine medals, seven were won in the event that is now being dropped. Calling the decision non-transparent and unfair, the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) president Raninder Singh has stated that it will hit the majority of countries hard.
“There is no logic to this decision. It isn’t just bad for us, but also bad for many countries. We had information about them dropping the double trap event. We spoke to people in the Asian Shooting Confederation and the event was restored, but we had no clue of them dropping so many events, without consulting any other country or the Olympic Council of Asia,” said Raninder.
When asked if it is wrong for a host country to pick and drop events according to their advantages, he replied, “Of course it is unfair. You can’t drop traditional events without any discussion. It is unprofessional.”
He discarded any possibility of a conspiracy and said, “They may have included the 300m event and the running target event because Indonesia has a strong military base and they have the infrastructure ready.”
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