Shooting as a sport can make a mark in India

One major reason why parents are reluctant to push their kids towards sports in India, besides the bleak financial prospects, is the inherent limits our genetics supposedly bind us by. Just look at the foreign athletes, all muscle bound. Look at our Asian counterparts, lean with twitching fast twitch muscles. Parents want to press their kids ahead in some field where they use their gray cells more than their muscles.

Excuses will always be prevalent, one could argue all day long why Indians aren’t genetically gifted and how it stops us from competing among the elite. That nature nurture argument is for another day.

In a country where achieving a peak athletic body is seen as a long shot and brains are celebrated more, its not surprising that a lot of sports enthusiasts would gravitate towards something like shooting for their kids. Watching shooting the other day, I was struck by how little seemed to happen. Bunch of guys stand motionless like statues in a line, and there’s a bull’s eye which develops holes in it as they pull the trigger.

Gagan Narang of India poses with his bronze medal

Shooting may be the most contradictory sport to watch. Contradictory in terms of the action, they are shooting a gun for God’s sake! And at the same time something so dynamic is so mind numbingly boring to watch. If you could see the bullet fly towards the target Max Payne ‘bullet time’ style, that would make it so much more interesting. But I digress.

Point being that shooting is more of a mental than a physical sport. At the same time you don’t have to be a genius to be on top like you do in other mental games like Chess. This sport is more about precision, composure, focus, coordination, and other qualities which can be achieved through practice. And being unable to sprint faster than the other guy, being unable to jump higher than them does not limit your performance.

Its all about the time you put in, to make yourself better. You get what you put in and if you are mentally predisposed to something like this you can make a mark for yourself.

That appeal of shooting has always been prevalent. Our armed forces have been training shooters for generations. But with the shining victories of Gagan Narang and Abhinav Bindra, there has been a renewed interest in the sport. A private shooting website, Indianshooting.com crashed thrice after Gagan Narang won the bronze a few days ago because of the unprecedented traffic it drew after Narang’s victory.

Here’s something where an Indian, even one who’s not in peak physical fitness condition, can make a mark. Not to disparage the importance of fitness, but the physical demands of this sport are less exclusive.