New Delhi, Sep 21 (IANS): Having already won two medals at the ongoing Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, rifle shooter Rudrankksh Patil is “excited” for what is on offer as he gears up for the 50m Rifle 3 Positions event.
Patil, who won a team gold in the 2023 Hangzhou Games, backed that success with a double medal outing in Japan when he helped the men’s team win the silver and went on to bag an individual bronze later on in the individual final.
Speaking after the success, he has put his focus on the 50m Rifle 3 Positions event, which is slated to take place on the coming Friday. “So, this is my first time participating in the Games in double events and this is my second year after starting 3P.
“So, I’m very excited to play it out and I have good coaching, good guidance, good support from all the support staff and the Indian team which can help me, which I have to just follow and I think everything will be fine,” he replied to IANS query during a roundtable interaction with media after his twin medal wins.
He shared the coaches’ advice of keeping things simple and focusing on shooting rather than predicting medal finishes, which can eventually lead him to win a medal.
“But our coaches have said that ‘you have shot a certain score and that led to your selection during the tournament. You don’t have to shoot anything extraordinary. You have to just shoot your daily thing, and that is just going to be enough’. And for the 3P finals and all, I myself am very excited to see how well I can perform, how well I can do in this event,” he added.
Patil was in gold medal position in the individual 10m final but dropped down later. He stated that the nerves played a role in the slip-up as he settled for a bronze.
“So when we started with the finals, I had a strong start, which gave me confidence that today is my day. I’m doing really well. But at the same time, because I was rank one for a pretty long time and this year, I haven’t played that many finals, so when I came into these finals, I wasn’t so very confident.
“But we had a lot of training finals, which boosted my confidence a bit for the finals, which made me feel at home at the final range also. But as I was climbing up, knowing that I was in the gold medal position, it was going very well that started building up a bit of nervousness inside of me. And I think I could have handled it a bit better. But here we are with a bronze, so I’m happy with that also,” he told the media.
