How India’s marksmen get ready to handle the high stress before big events
Palak, India’s gold medallist shooter. Pic/PTI
The tension inside the Fuyang Yinhu Sports Centre’s indoor shooting halls is palpable each time a final takes place. Every shooter’s pulse rate and heartbeat rises and falls with each shot. It is to deal with this exact scenario that the National Rifle Association of India’s High Performance Director Pierre Beauchamp has introduced the War Room.
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“IT is a unique concept developed by our High Performance Director (HPD), who is also a sports science expert. Here, we create a room at the range [Karni Singh Range in Delhi] using a picture or videos of the actual competition venue as a backdrop and make our athletes dry shoot [shooting without bullets]. The shooters are wired and as we create situations that could occur in a final, we accordingly measure the shooter’s pulse rate and heartbeat rate as the final progresses. Later, we analyse how the shooter has reacted to these different situations and these findings help the shooter to react better during competition,” India’s pistol shooting coach Ronak Pandit explained on Friday.
India’s pistol shooting coach Ronak Pandit at the Fuyang Yinhu Sports Centre yesterday. Pic/Ashwin Ferro
“Not all athletes are using it yet, but 90 per cent are, and I can tell you that 100 per cent of those who use it, are winning medals while those who don’t, are not winning medals,” added Pandit, a 2006 Commonwealth Games gold medallist.
Also Read: Shooters must do better in finals, says NRAI High Performance Director Beauchamp
Teenage shooting sensation Palak, 17, who won gold in the women’s 10m air pistol individual final and silver in the team event on Friday has been one the war room’s success stories. “It’s a very interesting concept. It feels exactly like how you feel during a competition. The room is like a war zone, that’s why the name. The findings are very informative. For example, moments after a qualification round, we are very relaxed, but just before shooting in the final series, things get nervy. These findings help us control those nerves better at such big competitions like the Asian Games,” she explained.
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