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Tilottama Sen, only 15, who started shooting in 2020 during the pandemic to keep herself occupied, shot down a Paris Olympics quota place for the country in 10m air rifle at the Asian Championships in Changwon, Korea, on Friday.
She had qualified in fourth place with a score of 630.5. Tilottama top things up a notch to shoot 252.3 in the final and win a silver and a quota.
Another Paris Olympics quota came for India in men’s air rifle event, with Arjun Babuta too clinching a silver medal. Showing remarkable form, Arjun first topped the qualification with a high score of 633.4 points and then gave a tough fight to Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Sheng Lihao of China, eventually winning a silver medal. (251.2 points) Lihao won gold with 252.1 points.
Missing the gold medal would not hurt Arjun that much, since the 24-year-old been has been eyeing an Olympic quota for a long time and has consistently shot impressive scores in the last one year. Having won a gold medal in Changwon World Cup last year, Arjun had happy memories of the place. It showed in his shooting too.
“We knew it was around the corner,” says Deepali Deshpande, Arjun’s coach and former international shooter who has groomed him since his junior days. “He was in good shape and I could see that he has settled down after the changes we made in his shooting.”
Deshpande says that Arjun has come through a “testing period” in the last couple of years, overcoming a bad back injury and also had to work on his “general attitude.”
“He is one of the most talented shooters I have seen. He has an eye for precision which is a rare ability in shooters. But he has lot of other issues. He is never satisfied and can pick faults with anything — from his posture to technique.”
It has been a long time since Arjun came to the spotlight as a talented junior in 2016 with a clutch of international medals but he struggled at the senior level in international events. A back injury pegged him back in 2018 and he took a year off only to come back stronger after the Covid break. He worked hard on his physical conditioning and results started showing in 2021. But Arjun was constantly grappling with doubts, wondering whether he was good enough at the highest level.
Narrating an incident, Deshpande recalls when Arjun called her anxiously during a national trial in Bhopal earlier this year as he was not able to get his technique right during the pre-event training. It was an important trial to maintain his place in the team.
“He was complaining about everything from his posture to movement, that it was just not working. We had a session in the morning and suggested a small correction in his stance for better balance. For the next 60 shots he did not budge from his stance, stood in that particular way and shot brilliantly. It is not easy to incorporate such changes, especially in air rifle where you have to bear the weight of the rifle and stand in one posture shot after shot, but that’s how talented he is.” says Deshpande.
“He has been a work in progress for a long time. We made changes in equipment, he had put on some weight, so we worked on his physique. There were persistent changes,” she added. “The age around 23-24 is very critical… you can be unsure about your career. You want to be more responsible but if things don’t go your way it can lead to self-doubt and create confusion in mind. He was dealing with all of that but at the National Games last year there was a shift in his attitude. He became calmer and more focussed,” she said.
Before he left for Korea, Arjun had sessions with a well-known psychologist and that helped too.
While Arjun has come up the tough way, polishing his skills and working on his mental strength all these years, Tilottama’s rise has been meteoric. Her father Sujit Sen had taken her to a shooting club in Bengaluru so that her daughter can spend some time away from home during Covid.
Little did he know that Tilottama would be soon winning state and national medals and find herself in the national team (2022). Last year she won bronze in junior world championships in Cairo, and in August she came close to shooting down a quota place for Paris Olympics at her first Senior World Championships in Baku. She finished 4th, while Mehuli Ghosh who won the bronze sealed one quota place for India.
“She was so close to getting a Paris Olympics quota and that left her disaapointed. She also narrowly missed out on selection for the Asian Games. So she was very very determined to win here,” says Sujit.
“When she started shooting it was just to keep her engaged. There was school during COVID and she was sitting idle at home but gradually she picked up and started winning medals in state and national events.”
However, Tilottama was still shooting casually until she saw the India blazer for the first-time last year. “That changed something in her for sure. The flag, the India colours, has made her take up the sport seriously.”
Serious enough for a 15-year-old to strike down an Olympic quota.
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