New Delhi,
\nIt\u2019s not often you see a reigning world No.1 shooter in a particular event trying his luck in another. At the Karni Singh Shooting Range here today, Ankur Mittal, the numero uno double trap shooter, made his debut in trap in the senior category at the National Championships. Mittal has shot in the trap event in the past, albeit as a junior; today was the first time the Haryana marksman shot in the senior category.<\/p>\n
The switch, though, was forced. The International Shooting Sports Federation (ISSF) has dropped double trap as well as the 50m air rifle and 50m air pistol event from the Olympic Games programme for 2020. ISSF said the decision was taken to comply with the International Olympic Committee\u2019s (IOC) vision 2020 statement that calls for the equal representations of both male and female athletes during the Tokyo Games. The vacant slots have been taken up by a mixed event in trap, 10 metre air pistol and 10 metre air rifle events.<\/p>\n
At the end of Day 1 of the qualifications, Mittal finished at a lowly 51, breaking 41 out of the 50 targets in the two rounds of competition. However, he seemed satisfied with his effort as he hadn\u2019t trained at all before his big debut. \u201cIt was good. I think I did pretty well, I scored 19 and 22, even though I had not been training for trap,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Asked how much did he train for the event before the Nationals, he said: \u201cI did not train. Yesterday was the first time I shot two rounds during the official training. And I shot much better yesterday, it was 21 and 24. I am making little mistakes but will overcome them with some practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old has had a wonderful 2017. A silver medal at the World Cup in New Delhi was followed by a gold at the Acapulco World Cup in March. He then bagged a silver medal in the prestigious World Championship in Moscow, and then capped the wonderful year by winning the Asian Shooting Championships in Astana. The results propelled him to the top of the rankings, released in the first week of October.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have made a decision not to train (trap) seriously till the Asian Games gets over. Both the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games are important. I don\u2019t want to break my rhythm,\u201d he explained. Mittal went to Italy in August to get his trap gun and his stock fixed. He shot a few rounds there but when he trained for the double trap, he felt a little awkward as the gun was lighter and had the potential to bring his scores down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am shooting with a different gun in trap, so it is difficult for everyone. But I will take this up seriously only after the Asian Games. Today was only for fun,\u201d he said. The competitor in him, however, wants to improve. \u201cIt is not so bad. I can cover up tomorrow and the day after, as there are three more rounds left. But rest assured, I am not disappointed at all, it is not my main event as of now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi, It\u2019s not often you see a reigning world No.1 shooter in a particular event trying his luck in another. At the Karni Singh Shooting Range here today, Ankur Mittal, the numero uno double trap shooter, made his debut in trap in the senior category at the National Championships. Mittal has shot in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10315,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10316,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10314\/revisions\/10316"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}