Gun for Glory Shooting Championship Churns Out Professionals

The growth of Indian shooting is a product not just of the initiatives taken by the National Rifle Association of India but also by the likes of private academies like Gun for Glory. In its fourth year, the Gun for Glory Shooting Championship has discovered 100 shooters who will take part in national events in the future. The Championship is also now the shooting tournament with the maximum prize money in India.

Six days, a total prize purse of Rs 15 lakhs and an opportunity to shoot with James Bond's Walther gun has made the Gun for Glory Shooting Championship the hottest destination for amateur and professional shooters in the country. Shriyanka Sadengi, who is a Junior international gold medalist from the Gun for Glory academy, says, "GFG keeps coming up with new ideas to promote shooting and to instill the spirit of shooting amongst people. For the first time in India, we have a Challenger Cup where the players shoot one on one, against each other. You have the crowd support, too. People are allowed to cheer. It is a very good format which helps shooters get used to pressure situations." (Watch full video here)

The GFG Shooting Championship is an initiative of Olympic bronze medalist, Gagan Narang. The Championship has been held every year since the academy was set up 4 years ago. In that time, the Championship has helped more than 200 amateur shooters blossom into professionals. Says Gagan,"The guy who won the first dueling event in the first edition of the GFG Championship is now competing in the shooting nationals. That is just one of our success stories."

In the last one year, shooters from the GFG Academy have won 85 international medals from different competitions. The Academy is now focusing on grooming India's shooting talent by focusing on kids between the ages of 11 and 14 years. Over 1000 children from 40 schools in Pune participated in various shooting events, hoping to win a GFG scholarship, which would assure them free training at the Academy. Says Narang, " This year we focused on a very unique talent hunt program, which is called the Shooting Star Talent Hunt Program. Kids between 11 and 14 are being looked at because we feel that it is the right age to identify talent. They are shooting on a SCAT simulator, imported from Russia. That tells you about the technique and stability of the kid. The ones with good control will be given scholarships. With the help of the SCAT simulator, it is very easy to pin down the best talents."

But for Gagan, gathering funds has been much tougher than winning medals in the last four years. Often he has had to put in his own prize money to run the Academy and events like this. As Indian shooting goes from strength to strength, what fuels Gagan's passion is his determination to hunt for raw talent that can be moulded into future champions.