NRAI makes a U-turn, welcomes back all Indian coaches
Vinayak Padmadeo
New Delhi, April 30
In a move that can be termed as National Rifle Association of India’s (NRAI) bid to forgive and forget, it has reinstated almost all of the coaches fired in the aftermath of the Tokyo Olympics disaster.
Last year, NRAI president Raninder Singh had called for a complete overhaul of the coaching staff after the shooters failed to win a single medal for the second successive Olympics.
In December, NRAI had shown the door to 28 coaches as their contracts were not renewed. Now, the body has sent mails to over 30 coaches asking them to join the national camp that starts tomorrow.
Almost all the coaches who were fired have been reinstated, with the exception of Jaspal Rana, who was singled out by Singh for being a ‘negative factor’ and the one who caused a lot of wrangling amongst the coaching staff.
Suma Shirur is likely to take over the 10m air rifle team, while former chief coach of shotgun team Mansher Singh will be looking after the National Centre of Excellence (NCOE) shooters at the Tughlakabad shooting range.
Arjuna Award-winning Olympian Joydeep Karmakar is expected to lead the 50m rifle discipline. Also returning to the fold are Ronak Pandit, Deepali Deshpande, Samaresh Jung, Manoj Kumar, Deepak Dubey, Randhir Singh, Rajiv Sharma and Anwer Sultan. Overall, the list has over 30 names.
New structure
NRAI is seeking to appointment High Performance Director/Manager for each of the three shooting disciplines. Lauryn Mark has already been appointed as High Performance Manager of the shotgun team, while her husband and multiple Olympics medallist Russell Mark has taken over as the trap coach. Juan Giha will be overseeing the skeet team. A source said NRAI was keen to make all coaches accountable and all the training data will have to be shared with it.
“We have put together a structure as we have to know what is going on with our shooters. The High Performance Managers will take the lead here,” the source said.
He added NRAI was helpless when it came to the Indian coaches. “Frankly, we had to go back to a few of the same names as they have been Olympians. We cannot appoint novices,” he added.
