Rio Olympics (shooting): Foreign trained Heena Sidhu flops second time too

Rio de Janeiro: Former ‘world No. 1’ Heena Sidhu ended her tryst with Olympic shooting with another disastrous showing as she failed to qualify for the final round in the women’s 25m pistol event in the Olympic shooting competition here on Tuesday. Heena Sidhu, who trained extensively abroad to prepare for this mega event, had earlier finished 14th in the 10m air pistol event. The 26-year-old shooter who was sanctioned funds under SAI’s Target Olympic Podium (TOP), collapsed like most of her high profile team mates in the Olympic. Heena’s husband and coach Ronak Pandit repetedly sought sports ministry’s intervention for more fund allocation to train abroad in a highly competitive atmosphere. The ministry buckled and sanctioned foreign exchange not only for her but also for various other world number ones and twos in the Indian shooting squad. Barring Abhinav Bindra, who finished fourth, and Jitu Rai, who made it to the final round of his event, this highly expensive shooting squad has failed miserably. Heena was never in contention in the championship. She started precision round with a score of 95 while 12 others shot more than her in this round. The Indian again fired 95 in the second series and this time number of competitors shooting more than her increased and in the third series, she fired 96 to finish precision round at 15th with a total of 286, which included eight perfect shots of 10. In rapid round, Heena fired 290 points in three series (97, 97, 96). She again had eight perfect shots of 10. The aggregate total of 576 (286, 290) placed her at lowly 20th in the field of 40 shooters. Interestingly, among the first eight qualifiers, are two from Greece – Anna Korakoki (584) and Minika Karsch (583). The leader is Chinese Jing Jing Zhang (592). Then there is Bulgarian Antoaneta Boneva, Russian Ekaterina Korshunova and Korean Jo Yong Suk. Asked if they also trained abroad, a Greece official laughed off the suggestion saying, “We are struggling to survive  in our country. We don’t have enough money to run our households and you are expecting us to go to foreign countries to train.” Chinese hardly send their shooters abroad and the Bulgarian and Gerogian officials say that they are lucky to be here because IOC paid for them. “Our governments were not in a position to send us here and you are talking of foreign training.” Heena’s comment after the competition was as expected, “I did my best, gave my best shot but that was what I could do. It was a tough field. My best performance was not best today."