Chandigarh, June 19
The moment one enters the house of Lieut-Col Jagir Singh Dhillon (retd), international shooter turned coach, one is greeted with a slogan ‘shooters den’. Then once you make your way to his drawing room, more than 150 medals and series of photographs with eminent political and sports personalities including with former Prime Minister of India Jawahar Lal Nehru gives one a different feeling. The appreciation letters from various other prominent figures were also seen hanging on the walls. And now this former Colonel with Corps of EME, is all set to celebrate golden jubilee year of his beginning in 2003.
It dates back to the year 1952, when Jagir Singh joined the Army and was first posted at Bangalore. As for his first love, shooting in rifle category, he represented his unit in the national championship in 1953. He took part in .22 prone event. Since then there had been no stopping for 1934 born Jagir Singh, who still participate in open men category in every national shooting championship, the latest being held at Indore where he won silver medal.
Col Dhillon represented India in the 1970 Asian Games at Bangkok (Thailand), then again in 1978 Asian Games and also in the 1982 Asian Games held in Delhi. In 1995, when Delhi played host to the Commonwealth Shooting Championship he took part in this meet also.
Col Dhillon has a 10-metre air rifle range in the backyard of his residence with two base stations — one for manual operation and other with electronic pulley.
Col Dhillon, who coaches olympian Abhinav Bindra, said he was a hardworking shooter and the day is not far he would win medal for India in Olympics.
On the likely target aim of Abhinav, Col Dhillon said any score above 596/600 would be good for his overall standing. Col Dhillon also praised another young shooter, Sabeeha Dhillon, who has just returned from Czech Republic after taking part in the 12th meeting of Olympic shooting hopes at Plzen. Sabeeha shot 390/400 there and was ranked 13th in the world.
Col Dhillon said city has abundant talent with many budding shooters also coming up, like Sukhmanpreet Sidhu, Gurparnit, Roopmeet Mann. Col Dhillon said the new shooting range at SAS Nagar, where the shooting event of the 31st Naional Games were held last year, would be a boon to this game in the region.