NRAI releases new guidelines for Indian shooters' selection for Paris 2024 Olympics
The National Rifle Association of India unveiled a new selection procedure for the Paris 2024 Olympics on Monday. This was done in anticipation of the Indian shooters' Olympic qualifying cycle commencing this week at the ISSF World Championships in Cairo, where shooters are expected to do well.
Rifle and pistol shooters will be the only ones who must abide by the new rule. Instead of assessing shooters for their consistency throughout the course of the whole Olympic cycle, the NRAI will take into account their form during the Olympic year through the Olympic shooting trials.
The squad will go through a total of four trials during the Olympic year before being finalised by June 2024. India's final opportunity to secure Olympic quotas will be the Asian Championships in February 2024. The trials will be open to the top five Indian shooters as determined by the national rankings as of February 29, 2024. To qualify for the trials, shooters must have at least one ranking point on the Qualification Ranking for the Olympic Games (QROG) list.
The shooters with the highest average score will be chosen in accordance with the available quotas for Paris 2024 using the average scores from three of these four trials. The total of the shooters' trials will be increased by one bonus point if they met the Olympic quota. Shooters with less than three trials appearances will not be given consideration for a spot on the Olympic team.
The NRAI has implemented many significant changes since Indian shooters failed to medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, including the revised selection policy. Prior to hiring Austria's Thomas Farnik, a six-time Olympian, as a coach for rifle shooters, India chose two-time Olympic medalist Munkhbayar Dorjsuren as the foreign coach for the Indian national pistol shooting squad.
Russel Mark, an Australian who won a gold medal in trap shooting at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics, is presently the foreign coach of the Indian shotgun squad.