Five-day state shooting championship from Wednesday

Coimbatore: Around 300 shooters from various clubs in Tamil Nadu would participate in the 36th State Shooting Championship for rifle and pistol events, beginning here from Wednesday. The five-day championship would be the qualifying event for the G V Mavalankar shooting competition at Guwahati next month, which in turn would be the qualifying competition for the national championship, said C Sylendra Babu, president of Coimbatore Rifle Club. The tournament will have 12 events in 10 metre Air Rifle, Air Pistol and 50 meter free pistol, 50 meter rifle and 25 meter, and will be held under the auspices of Tamil Nadu Shooting Association, he said. “Participants include 60 women shooters in three categories. Top national level shooters like N Shanmugam, J S Venkatachalapathi, N B Vignesh Krishna, S Praveena, Ankita Singh, Sumeet Singhvi and Geetha Shankar have confirmed their entries,” Babu said.“The buzz would be great as two Naval officers from Coimbatore -- Harpreet Singh and Omkar Singh -- recently won medals in the Commonwealth Games. The enthusiasm is there for this sport,” Babu said.PTI