Olympic Shooters Special Connect with The Gita

Olympic Shooters

Shooting is one of the oldest sports and has been part of the Olympic Shooters programme right from its first edition, held at Athens in 1896. Currently, among others, it includes pistol, rifle and shotgun events. A total of 15 events will be held in the next year’s Olympics at Paris.

In the pistol and rifle events, shots are fired at targets over a distance of 10, 25, or 50 metres; participants have to fire 60 shots in the qualification round, and the top few Olympic Shooters enter the finals. Shotgun events entail shooting at flying clay birds and not static targets. What looks like a pure, docile sport with nothing much to be done, technically is an extremely difficult one, requiring peak fitness, endurance, strength – physically, and complete focus and meditative calmness – mentally.

This is one sport that exemplifies the often-quoted Bhagwad Gita verse 2:47: ‘Thy right is to work only, but never to its fruits; let the fruit-of-action be not thy motive, nor let thy attachment be to inaction.’

What spectators generally see is the Olympic Shooters taking an aim at the target, steadying himself and firing the shot. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Delve a little deeper into the physics behind it and you realise that the slightest degree of movement of the barrel at the moment of release of the shot gets amplified when the pellet/ bullet reaches the target, resulting in it deviating from the target’s perfect centre.

Olympic Shooters programme

Now here comes the tricky part. While predictably, we would think of focusing on the target, much more important, or rather the only important thing is to keep the barrel dead straight, without even the slightest movement at the time of shot release. This is only possible when the Olympic Shooters is focused on the fore and rear sights of the weapon; each weapon has sights which when aligned perfectly, meaning the barrel being dead straight, carry the shot to the target’s centre, and noton the target.

Physics again tells us that a perfect trigger release with perfect alignment will automatically hit bullseye. So herein comes the Gita verse. The sole focus of the Olympic Shooters has to be on the sights of the weapon, on the effort put in, and not the target, fruits of action, which automatically would result in a perfect shot. Any wavering of focus away from the sights and on the target, and the shooter is doomed. One point lost and he would tumble down the rankings. The shooting sport technique perfectly aligns with the purport of the verse.

While a lay spectator of the sport or a novice would think of the target, that is the result, the right way to fire a shot is focusing on the sight alignment, the effort. That’s what the Gita exults us to follow – Focus on efforts, not fruits of action.

Just imagine doing this precisely 60 times and later again in the finals and yet again one on one if there is a tie. What a Zen-like state top Olympic Shooters must be achieving when participating in the sport, and later carrying that on in daily life. A mere focus on this one single verse and its genuine implementation would in itself be a big effort to achieve remarkable results in all of one’s endeavours.

Unlike other sports, shooting sport is a specialised game required more than normal intellectual acumen. Yet until very recently no attempts seem to have been made in India to encourage the best available shooting talent in the country. Therefore this is a modest attempt to write and emphasize the importance of the Olympic Shooters sport and its development for the guidance of young aspirants to national and international championships.

The book contains memories of an internationally reputed sportsman and covers 21 years of international clay pigeon shooting in which the author himself took part and represented his country in five Olympics, five World Shooting Championships and many Asian Olympic Shooters Championships. The 38th World Shooting Championship in Cairo in 1962 remains his best performance when he tied for the Gold Medal of the World with a score of 295/300. So far this remains the only World Medal India has ever won in Shooting sport generally.

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Dr. Karni Singh born in the most famous ruling family of Bikaner, had a distinguished career in St. Stephen’s College in Delhi and was awarded Ph.D. by the Bombay University for his thesis “The Relations of the House of Bikaner with the Central Power from 1465 to 1949” Rarely one comes across a sportsman who also is a writer, an artist, a pilot and a politician. He was elected as a Member of Parliament from Bikaner Constituency as an Independent first in 1952 and retained his seat during the next four successive elections.

THERE are not many sports in which India has leached world standard but one of them is Clay Pigeon Shooting. On this field of sport, Dr. Karni Singh has written an absorbing book ‘From Rome to Moscow’ which is his second publication. Dr. Karni Singh needs no introduction. He belongs to the Royal family of Bikaner and was a Member of Parliament continuously from 1952 to 1977. His outstanding service to the nation, however, is in the field of shoot- ing Trap or Skeet.

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India today occupies pride of place in these sports, because of his achievements in this field. He has represented our country since 1960 in the Olympics when India made its debut in’ Clay Pigeon Shooting. He has also represented the country in World Championships and several Asian Shooting Championships. He holds national records in Traps and Skeet. He specialises in Clay Pigeon shooting in which he reached the zenith in 1962 at Cairo when he tied with Mr. Zimenkov of Russia for the Gold Medal.

These memoirs of Dr. Karni Singh are divided into three parts, the first dealing with the history of this sport, the second dealing with his experiences and suggestions and the third dealing with the rules and other information on Traps and Skeet. This book, I am sure, will arouse people’s interest in target shooting and other fire-arm sports and will be of immense use to lovers of this sport, The suggestions made by the author will help Indian Olympic Shooters, like his own daughter Rajyashree who is following her father’s footsteps, in improving their standard. The book is full of lively descriptions of many competitions and reminiscences and makes very interesting reading.