Naruka has eyes on bigger prize
The skeet shooter won gold at the Asian Championships and will be gunning for a medal at the Worlds next month
New Delhi: Anantjeet Singh Naruka seems to have developed a happy habit of rising to the occasion. Over the past couple of years, the 27-year-old skeet shooter from Jaipur has shot an individual silver at the Hangzhou Asian Games, finished fourth in the mixed team event with Maheshwari Chauhan at Paris Olympics, and took an individual bronze at the World Cup Final.
Last month, Naruka won the Asian Championships in Shymkent, Kazakhstan to once again prove his mettle. It was an improvement from his second-place finish in the same competition last year and a shot in the arm ahead of the Shotgun World Championships (Oct 8-19) in Athens, Greece.
Naruka warded off a stiff challenge from Mansour Al-Rashidi of Kuwait, a former Asian Games champion, to shoot 57 of possible 60 targets while Al-Rashidi secured 56 hits.
Unlike rifle and pistol events which are competed in sanitised indoor ranges — except the 50m 3P qualifiers which are outdoors — all shotgun competitions are outdoor disciplines, which makes weather a critical variable. The conditions were windy and dusty in Shymkent but Naruka banked on his experience to go about his business.
“It is a special win because the final was quite tense. Mansour gave me a good chase and the conditions were quite tough, but I did not think too much about the wind. It’s the same for everyone,” he said. A ten-day training camp in Italy under the tutelage of national coach Riccardo Filippelli, where Naruka was joined by trap shooter Raiza Dhillon and fellow skeet shooter Gurjoat Singh Khangura, also helped.
The genesis of Naruka’s recent success, however, lies in five eventful days of 2022 that he spent with former national coach Ennio Falco in Jaipur. Back then, Naruka was struggling with his technique and he had nothing much to show in terms of results either. Falco was in Jaipur to train a few shooters and Naruka struck deep, technical conversations with the Italian.
“Something clicked right away. By the end of the fifth day, I had a much better understanding of my sport in terms of technique. Once I got a hang of things, I knew I could shoot higher scores and stay in medal contention,” he said.
“I started shooting more consistent scores. At the Asian Games, I finally got my chance to shoot in a big final and I performed. After that, the floodgates kind of opened.”
The “technical overhaul” Naruka mentions was in fact an assimilation of minute moving parts, right from the way he mounted the gun, to calling for the target, sighting it and eventually pulling the trigger. Ten days before last year’s World Cup Final in Delhi, Naruka, on Falco’s advice, changed his weapon from a Beretta DT11 to Beretta DT11 Black. His new shotgun came with a 30-inch barrel while the earlier version had a 28-inch barrel. The two-inch increase barely sounds significant, but Naruka insists the advantages are manifold.
“It is a very technical discipline and every minor change can have a long lasting impact. The longer barrel feels more balanced and gives me a better sense of perception. We wanted to change it long back but didn’t because the results were coming alright,” he explained.
Asian crown secured, Naruka has quite literally trained his guns on the World Championships. He made the team after the shotgun trials in Bucho, Punjab and believes his shooting is as good as it has ever been. A week-long break will be followed by some training in the domestic ranges before Naruka and the rest of the shotgun squad heads to the Tuscan town of Arezzo to finetune the rough edges with Filippelli
“Worlds is the major target for me this year. I had chosen to take it a little easy since 2024 was very taxing because of the Olympics and 2026 will be demanding because of the Asian Games. I believe I have the ability to beat the best. I couldn’t be more ready,” he said.
The larger picture, of course, is Los Angeles. Having come within a shot of an Olympic medal, Naruka wants to leave no stone unturned for the next Games.
“Finishing fourth is never easy, but I think I handled it alright. I still think of Paris...we were so close to a medal. But I have put that behind me and will go all out for an Olympic quota next year.”
