Anantjeet Singh Naruka and Vivaan Kapoor have known each other for some time now. 26-year-old Naruka was there at the range when Kapoor first started to learn how to fire a shotgun. On Thursday at the Karni Singh Shooting range, both Rajasthan royals found themselves in familiar settings and won a bronze and silver medal on the last day of the ISSF World Cup Final, taking India’s haul at the event to four medals.
Hailing from affluent families from Jaipur with fathers who were also shooters, Naruka and Kapoor are part of a new line of shotgun wielders who are slowly creeping up the world order of their events.
Naruka finished third today in the Men’s skeet event, just a few months removed from finishing fourth at the Paris Olympics in the Mixed Trap, eventually losing out to China. He also finished with a silver medal at the Hangzhou Asian Games, losing the gold to a World-Record matching effort.
Kapoor, the younger of the two at 22, has been training with Kuwaiti World Champion trap shooter Kahled Al Mudhaf, who was also part of the Paris Olympics. He found himself amid a group of particularly tough Olympic medallists, of past and present, on Thursday. David Kostelecky, a two-time Olympic medallist from Beijing 2008 and Tokyo 2020 and coach to many Indian shooters, and Paris Olympics silver medallist Qi Ying, were part of the six-man finalists. Kostelecky exited early, while Ying took the gold medal with a score of 47, three more than Kapoor.
“It’s your competition,” said Al Mudhaf to Kapoor three days ago. Boosting the young shooter’s confidence has been easy because the Kuwaiti marksman is firm in his belief that his ward has what it takes to be one of the best in the world. But there is also a call to be patient.
“He is young. He is 22 years old. He has a long time. I am 47. I just came from the Paris Olympics. It’s my fourth Olympics. No need to hurry. Trap and skeet is usually said to be an event for 30-40 plus. Does he have that desire? I think he has… People talk to me as I am a shooting legend. I think he will be better than me,” proclaims the Kuwaiti.
Kapoor had done well at the Olympic Selection trials and nearly pulled off a charge to make the Paris Games team. It was an unexpected performance even for him as he hadn’t expected a chance to go initially.
“I have a very organized plan with my coach working towards the LA Olympics. And I’ve never had this plan before. I was about three to four targets away from being in the team for the Paris Olympics. But always my aim was to prepare for LA. And my preparation started the day the Paris Olympics ended.”
Naruka’s results on the other hand are slowly putting him on the map as one of the better skeet shooters in the world. A 4th place finish at Paris and a silver at Hangzhou are high-quality results.
“The four of us (men and women shotgun shooters) are in the finals today and we have been performing well now. Slowly, slowly we are getting to know about the sport and the younger crowd is coming in,” says Naruka.
Tough period
The 26-year-old has had a particularly tough last few months. Riding into the Olympics on the belief that he was ready to make it to the podium, Naruka and Maheshwari Chauhan came agonisingly close to the podium, missing out by a solitary point.
“It’s hard when you come as close as I did to winning a medal at my debut Olympics. But I also learn from my mistakes. When people were getting eliminated here, I thought to myself, ‘This cannot go as the Olympics went. I have to win a medal’.”
At the range yesterday, he would often find himself in lonely moments, looking down at the ground and muttering words of affirmations to himself. He would often practice raising his hand and visualising the trajectory of the clay targets rapidly moving away from him.
“I was boosting myself. I was telling myself that I can’t quit now because if I did then, ‘piche jaake dusre logon ko bandook chalate huey dekhna padega’,” says Naruka.
The next step for the shotgun shooters will have to be consistently acing international events.
