Since the National Championships in December 2024 at the Karni Singh Ranges here, her pistol hasn’t stopped firing, until this week at the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya. New Delhi: The last two seasons have been nothing less than spectacular for Suruchi Singh.
On Wednesday, however, Suruchi, as part of India’s star-studded 10m women’s air pistol team that also included Manu Bhaker and Esha Singh, shot 568 points in qualification and finished 15th. Just 20-years old and having gone to the Asian Games with huge expectations, such a performance can be devastating. To make matters worse, the men and women pistol teams drew a blank in individual and team events, quite a turnaround from the 2023 Asian Games when India bagged four medals, including two gold in the pistol events. They topped the 21-team qualification ahead of Iran (584), South Korea (582) and Indonesia (580). Together they logged 484.6 points to win gold, once again breaking the Asian record. Korea (Choo Gaeun and Hong Suhyeon) took silver with 478 points and Iran (Haniyeh Rostamiyan and Vahid Golkhandan) the bronze. I shot 20 less than my average scores. India also took silver medal in men’s 50m rifle 3-position team event — Aishwary Pratap Singh, Rudrankksh Patil and Niraj Kumar. India totalled 1762 points and finished four points behind China 1766 points. Aishwary shot 589, Niraj 588 and Rudrankksh, who is new to the event, scored 585.
She hasn’t shot this low in two years and it not only put her out of the individual final but dealt a big blow to her confidence. That was the frightening space she was in, with the mixed team event coming up in two days. Only Manu Bhaker made it to the final, finishing fifth. There was one last chance of redemption and that was the mixed pistol team discipline. The onus was on Suruchi and Kamaljeet, who replaced Kedarling Balakrishna Uchaganve, to make amends. Suruchi, once she got going, was unstoppable in the final. They led from start to finish with Suruchi again leading in the scoring. “My score in individual competition was so bad that I didn’t know what had happened– didn’t expect at all. I don’t even remember when I shot so badly in my competitive career. “But it was good guidance from our coach Samaresh (Jung) sir that we were able to comeback. Though Aishwary and Niraj qualified for the final, they failed to win an individual medal. It was another event where India had high hopes with world championships silver medallist Aishwary in the fray. Niraj too has been performing well in international meets. But in the eight-shooter final, Aishwary struggled with his rhythm and finished fifth while Niraj bowed out in eighth place.
“When my match ended, I felt as if everything was over for me,” Suruchi said. It was tough,” said Suruchi, relieved after the gold medal. He asked us to just take the match out of our memory and hit the reset button,” she said.
