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Vinayak Padmadeo
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, april 24
Growing up, Shahzar Rizvi was given a tough time by his cousins Rayyan and Shaual Rizvi. While the two were firing shotguns, young Shahzar couldn’t even lift one, let alone bear the recoil of the gun.
The puny kid, Shahzar left the family obsession with the big guns and picked up a pistol in 2009. Then too his cousins had a big laugh at his expense. “Ye kya utha liya (What have you picked up?)” they asked.
After years of suffering at the hands of his cousins, Shahzar plans to get back at them when he returns from South Korea. “They have shot in the Nationals but now I have two World Cup medals. I’ll ask them how many they have won,” Shahzar told The Tribune from Changwon, South Korea, after winning a silver medal in the 10m Air Pistol event at the World Cup.
“I joined Air Force in 2014 and then things began to fall in place as far as my shooting was concerned. I had nothing to worry after that as everything including food and pellets were taken care of by the Fauj,” Shahzar said.
Tuesday’s silver medal was his second successive medal in the ISSF World Cups. Previously, the 19-year-old had stamped his class as he won the 10m Air Pistol event in the World Cup at Guadalajara (Mexico) with a world record score of 242.3 in the finals.
‘Not happy’
Shahzar had a golden chance to win at Changwon too but came up short by 0.2 decimal points. At 19, others would have been out celebrating for winning another World Cup medal. But not Shahzar. He was back at the hotel moping over losing the gold medal.
“I missed the gold medal. Gold looks far better than the silver. I had two very bad shots in the final and that had big impact on where I finished,” said Shahzar, who is from Bawana Kot, Meerut.
The gold was won by Russia’s Artem Chernousov. Chernousov had a commanding lead of over four points over Rizvi. But a couple of bad scores by the Russian in his 19th and 20th shots in the 24-shot final opened the door for Rizvi. The youngster duly obliged and closed the gap with 10.6 and a perfect 10.9. Shahzar needed to score 10.3 or over in his last shot to win the gold. Instead he logged 10.0 to finish second.
Final target
His coach and observer of the Indian rifle and pistol team, Ronak Pandit, said the hard work has started to show. “He is a young guy with very little final experience. So before we left for the World Cup we practised for finals. I made him shoot five finals in two days,” Ronak said.
“We talked about those two bad shots, 9.0 and 9.1. You take your shots and wait for the others to make a mistake. He is very young but still showed the fight during a pressure situation while facing elimination,” he added.
Celebrations on hold
Shahzar said he will not celebrate any of his World Cup wins. “No point in celebrating these. I will have a big party where I will invite everyone when I win an Olympics medal. Then I will celebrate,” he said. “My focus is doing better in the Munich World Cup and hopefully winning a quota for the country in the World Championships that will be held in September.”
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