Prime Minister Narendra Modi: Just over a week after concluding their historic 19th Asian Games campaign where they won 22 medals including seven gold, the Indian shooting squad is back at a national camp to prepare for the upcoming 15th Asian Shooting Championship (ASC) in Changwon, Korea. The championship assumes added significance, given they will offer a total of 24 Paris Olympic quota places, equally divided across the 12 individual Olympic events in the Rifle, Pistol and Shotgun categories. The Indian squad has already won seven Paris quotas in Shooting and will be looking to garner as many of the 17 that they can possibly win in Changwon.
The entire squad including coaches and support staff checked in to their accommodations on October 9, itself and after attending the felicitation cum welcome event for the successful Asian Games squad hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, they got down to training in earnest on Wednesday morning.
The senior squad has a total of 38 shooters in the camp along with 17 coaches and eight support staff. The junior squad on the other hand has 36 shooters along with 12 coaches and five support staff members. The camp will be run under the supervision of High-Performance Director Dr. Pierre Beauchamp as well as foreign coaches Thomas Farnik (Rifle), Munkhbayar Dorjsuren (Pistol), Marcelo Dradi (Trap) and Ennio Falco (Skeet).
The duration of the camp varies for various groups depending on their Changwon schedule. Competitions at the 15thASC begin on October 24 and the finals events are scheduled on November 1.
