As the clock ticked down on the eight contestants in the Men’s 50m 3 Positions event at the ISSF World Cup Final, they went about setting their rifles quickly into position before taking their shot. But for one of them, time didn’t seem to be in short supply.
Akhil Sheoran is languid when it comes to pressing the trigger. He takes the longest time to bring his rifle into place, and then stays there for what seems like an eternity before finally squeezing a shot out. Call it his technique, or his obsessive need for the perfect frame, but it didn’t prevent him from climbing the podium at the Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range in New Delhi on Wednesday.
In a top field, Sheoran staved off a late charge from Paris Olympics gold medallist and ISSF Men’s Shooter of the Year Yukun Liu to pick up a bronze medal.
“He’s become a faster shooter nowadays,” quips his personal coach Deepali Deshpande. “Once as a junior shooter, he had 20 seconds in which to take two shots. We were panicking but that’s how he shoots.”
At one moment during Wednesday’s final, Sheoran had Liu breathing down his neck, while simultaneously fighting for a podium spot against Jiri Privaratsky. All five remaining shooters had made a shot in the mid-10s, putting pressure on him. But the 29-year-old waited a few more seconds before managing a 10.8 shot. The Indian finished the final on 452.6 points while Hungary’s Peni Istvan and Czech Republic’s Privaratsky both won their second medal of the World Cup final when they snagged the gold and silver respectively.
The 50m 3P shooter’s day had started with a kind act to a fellow competitor. Kazakhstan shooter Konstantin Malinovskiy, who had finished fifth on Tuesday, had lost his shooting kit – including his jacket and pants – a day prior to the qualification and final. He told Sheoran about his predicament and the Indian shooter came to his aide, handing him a back-up jacket and pair of pants. Malinovskiy took part in the event after taping up Sheoran’s name on the pants.
Eventful time
Last year, Sheoran won the bronze medal at the World Championships, a performance many didn’t see coming. In an already loaded Indian 50m 3P team, he added his name alongside Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar and Swapnil Kusale to a list of shooters who could have easily medalled at the Olympics.
But come the trials, Kusale and Singh prevailed and Sheoran was left to rue another Olympics passing him by. After his event on Wednesday, he said that an accident a few days before his domestic trials in Bhopal resulted in a chip fracture and a cut on the cheek.
Deshpande says that initially Sheoran didn’t tell her about the injury. “If he had said it then, the NRAI would have beaten him up,” she says.
“He told me he was driving when another vehicle hit his car from behind. His left thumb got twisted under the wheel and he had a minor fracture. He also had a cut on the part of the cheek that goes on the rifle.”
Sheoran couldn’t shoot for a couple of weeks after that incident and when the first domestic trials took place in Bhopal, he was close to full fitness but without sufficient time on the range, according to Deshpande. Her other student Kusale made the team after the trials and went on to win a bronze medal at the Paris Games.
Missing out on yet another Olympics wasn’t the only thing going on in Sheoran’s mind at the time. A former Railways employee, he had quit his job and was on the verge of joining the Uttar Pradesh Police. But the appointment kept getting delayed and for him, this felt like another moment where things weren’t going his way.
But then in the space of a few days, good news poured in and he found out that he had made it to the Indian team for the World Cup Final and had also been approved for the post of Deputy Superintendent with UP Police. That put Sheoran in a better frame of mind as he stuck to his pace and picked up a bronze medal on his home turf.
