Former Indian shooting coach Tibor Gonczol dies

Indian shooting team's coach for 12 years from 1991 to 2002, Tibor Gonczol, died on Thursday.

Tibor was instrumental in the development of top Indian shooters like Samaresh Jung, Jaspal Rana, Anjali Bhagwat and Suma Shirur to name a few. Samaresh even dedicated his five gold medals and his 'Best Athlete Award' in 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games to Tibor.

"It's a very big loss to shooting sport and personally me, Tibor was the man who did everything for Indian shooting. It is because of him that the sport has reached where it is. Most of us owe our success to him," said Samaresh, as reported by indianshooting.com

Tibor, who was born in Hungary on 19th January in 1933, represented his country's shooting team for three years between 1952 and 1955. A couple of years later, he moved to Australia and was part of their national shooting team at various international competitions including the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.

In 1973, Tibor began his career as a coach. During his long stint with the Indian team, Tibor laid the stepping stone for a strong shooting team in India. He roped in the experienced Laszlo Szucsak as the rifle coach and also became the first coach to set up a sound training system for the national squad.

Hungarian pistol coach, Csaba Gyrik paid his tribute to Tibor, saying, "We have lost an important member of our shooting fraternity who took shooting sport to a different level for many of us."