The diversity in India’s shooting squad for Olympics is exciting: Abhinav Bindra | More sports News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: It’s beyond the cliched mix of youth and experience. The shooting squad India will send to the Olympics is nothing less than a storybook.
It’s not just the record number of shooting athletes that India will send to Tokyo, but the “diversity” of it that Abhinav Bindra also finds unique and unmatched — something that may lead to historic Games for Indian shooting.
You have a Saurabh Chaudhary and a Manu Bhaker — Olympic debutants but already youth Olympic champions. You have an Abhishek Verma — a wise-head hobby shooter and lawyer, who will realise his Olympic dream in just 6-7 years after first gripping an air pistol. Then you have a Tejaswini Sawant, who, unlike Verma, went through a grind of years and at 40 will make her maiden Olympic appearance. And there is the veteran Sanjeev Rajput who will mark Tokyo as his third Olympic appearance.

“That is exactly the democratic beauty of sport. That exactly is what makes sport so special,” said Bindra during a conversation with Timesofindia.com. “Sport is sometimes blind to who you are, where you come from, how many years in sports you’ve been or how much experience you have. Sport is blind to so many details.”
Bindra, still the only Indian to have won an individual Olympic gold, said India’s shooting squad for the Tokyo Games is an example of that “democratic beauty” and “diversity”.
“It is absolutely wonderful to see this diversity in sport because the Olympic Games really stand for diversity…Of course, the Indian shooting team (for Tokyo Olympics) also really embodies this uniqueness because we have very young athletes; we have athletes who’ve been in the sport for many, many years; we have athletes who are towards the latter end of their career, some are just starting out their career. So there’s tremendous diversity. There’s a tremendous mix,” said Bindra.

To add credentials to some of those names, Verma is world No. 1 in men’s 10m air pistol and Elavenil Valarivan, another debutant, is number one in women’s 10 m air rifle. These young guns can feed on the experience of someone like Rajput or Sawant.
“I’m sure that both sides (youth and experience) have their advantages. Sometimes when you’re young, you are more fearless, you do not have any baggage to carry. So it’s very diverse and it’s very exciting to see that. Wish each of them all the very best,” Bindra, the 2008 men’s 10m air rifle Olympic champion, said.