Shooter Rahi Sarnobat targeting Olympic medal, a resident of Kolhapur in Maharashtra, is in the headlines for her achievements in international competitions. He has won a gold medal at the ISSAF World Shooting Championships in Munich, Germany in 2019. He achieved this feat in 25 meter pistol shooting.
With this, his place has been confirmed for the Tokyo Olympics to be held in 2021. He has also been awarded the Arjuna Award.
Sarnobat caught the gun for the first time in his school days in Kolhapur as an NCC cadet. She was very comfortable in using it. He also felt a sense of power through this.
But his interest in shooting as a sport grew when his school’s Tejaswani Sawant won the shooting gold medal in the Commonwealth Games in 2006 in Australia.
Sarnobat says that she was inspired by this game after seeing Tejaswani Sawant win the gold medal. He immediately started researching facilities for shooting training in his city.
Get out of trouble
Sarnobat soon realized that there is a lack of facilities for shooting training in Kolhapur. He says that she used to complain to her coach about inadequate facilities. His coach then told him not to think too much about the facilities and talked about trying to perform his best.
Sarnobat’s parents fully supported him. He took full care of the fact that due to the initial frustration, Saranobat should not be disillusioned with his dreams.
Sarnobat started spending more time in Mumbai for better facilities. Even then, he was facing many problems. It also involved battling with weapons and bullets for practice.
But Sarnobat did not give up and started winning medals at the national level championship.
Forced to think about retirement
He was selected to represent India at the international level after performing well in domestic competitions. His initial success in international level competitions was achieved in the Youth Commonwealth Games in Pune. It was organized in the year 2008.
He then represented India at the Olympics, Commonwealth, Asian Games and ISSAF World Shooting Championships.
As a player, Sarnobat saw a bad phase, but she came out stronger by those conditions. In 2015, due to injury, he had to face a lot of difficulties in performing his satisfactory performance. At that time, she was forced to think about retirement.
But once again he made a great comeback in the sports world by winning the gold medal at the Asian Games in 2018 in Jakarta. She became the first woman to win gold in a singles competition at the Asian Games. A year later, in 2019, he won the gold medal at the ISSAF World Shooting Championship and confirmed his seat for the Tokyo Olympics.
He was also awarded the Arjuna Award in 2018 due to Shooter Rahi Sarnobat targeting Olympic medal achievements. She believes that this was one of the most important moments of her life.
Sarnobat now wants to win the gold medal for the country. She is also hopeful that she will be able to become a strong entitlement of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, the country’s biggest sports award.
