Maheshwari Chauhan was 12 when she picked up the Beretta 682, one of the shotguns that adorned her gun-enthusiast grandfather’s vast collection.
What began as a summer vacation hobby while visiting her family’s shooting range at their village, Siana, in Rajasthan, has now transformed into something a lot more serious. Last week, the 27-year-old Chauhan won a Paris Olympics quota after finishing second in the final Olympic qualification tournament in Doha.
Her quota meant that for the first time at the Olympics, India could have two women competing in skeet shooting. It also extended India’s record as the country will now have 21 shooters aiming for glory at the Games, which will be held from July 26 to August 11.
The silver medal at the qualifying tournament in Doha has seen Chauhan rising to the joint top spot with 11 points along with Dhillon, followed by Ganemat Sekhon at the third spot with nine points in the federation’s selection merit list for Paris.
When she began, however, these records and numbers were far from Chauhan’s mind. For her, a day at the shooting range was all about spending time with the family at their farmlands in Siana.
Chauhan would be accompanied by her grandfather Ganpat Singh, father Pradeep Singh and brother Daksheshwar Singh. Chauhan initially tried her hands in trap shooting but a year later, she shifted to skeet, a more complex and technical event as compared to the trap and double trap.
“One thing that made shooting natural to me was that I did not have any pressure. I just saw shotgun shooting as something to relax and saw it as fun. Yes, it took some time to adjust to the physical side of the sport with the gun recoil and impact as a 12-year-old but then I would only train for 2-3 months during school vacations,” Chauhan says.
Maheshwari’s quota meant that for the first time at the Olympics, India could have two women competing in skeet shooting.
Once she got the hang of the shotgun, she trained under then national skeet champion Amardeep Rai and later with national coach and Olympic champion Ennio Falco, ‘who helped me with the technicalities of skeet,’ adds Chauhan.
Unlike trap or double trap, which see shooters shooting targets shot from fixed angle houses, shooters in skeet have targets flying from two opposing towers at varying angles and height. It makes the flight of the target unpredictable and tougher compared to the other shotgun events.
But that wasn’t the only tough part about skeet which Chauhan had to overcome. “I am a diminutive shooter so it takes time for a lot of people to believe that I can handle the shotgun,” she laughs. “But then spending time at the stations at the village range and making the impressions of each station with the high and low houses each single day of practice is what helped me.”
Breakthrough in 2017
A top-20 finish in the ISSF World Cup in Mexico in 2013 was followed by a top-ten finish in the Asian Championship in 2016 for Chauhan. But it was a bronze in the 2017 Asian Championships that saw Chauhan emerging as a serious talent on the national scene.
The shooter would be part of the Indian teams for the World Cups and World Championships before she won a bronze in this year’s Asian Championships in Kuwait, where Raiza Dhillon won India’s first skeet quota for the Paris Games.
Even though time was running out for her to win a quota, Chauhan says she remained calm and trusted the hard work she had put in while training under Italian coach Riccardo Filipelli in Aritzo, where Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Diana Bocosi and 2022 World Cup Final silver medallist Martina Bartolomei also practise.
Chauhan says she remained calm and trusted the hard work she had put in while training under Italian coach Riccardo Filipelli in Aritzo. (Special Arrangement)
“The biggest thing I learnt in Italy was how the Italian shooters shot with a relaxed mind. They don’t get too worked up and keep the focus going while having the fun in the sport,” Chauhan says.
She adds: “The change for me was how I mount the gun. Earlier, I would connect in front of the target with the lead. Now I mount the gun and connect with it in front of me and then go with the lead and shoot. Yes, it did get lonely in Italy with the language barrier but then I would spend 5-6 hours at the range and would be so tired at the end of the day with nothing to think about and just sleep.”
While Filipelli made her re-learn some techniques, he underlined the need for Chauhan to ‘have fun.’ Or as he says, ‘the Italian Way, the fun way’.
“The first thing for me was to make her feel at ease and to make her understand that at the base of skeet, there should be fun. We worked a lot on the movement, on the face of the stock and a targeted approach. But then the underlying approach has been to shoot the Italian way, the fun way,” Filipelli tells The Indian Express.
When she entered the competition in Doha, not just Filipelli’s but even Dhillon’s words were ringing in Chauhan’s ears. “At Doha, Raiza told me that when she got the quota in Kuwait, she had shot without thinking about the quota place. It gave me belief to shoot according to my strengths,” Chauhan says.
When she returned with a medal and a quota, she was reminded of her grandfather, who passed away in 2012. “To see me win the quota for India and to make sure that two Indian women skeet shooters will be going to the Paris Olympics is something which he would have been proud of.”
The Rajasthan shooter had got married to shooter and hotel entrepreneur Adhiaj Singh last year and the family also has a shooting range in Rajsamand, where she trains currently. “I have been privileged to have all the support from my family and my husband Adhiraj Singh and his parents. In shotgun, it gets trickier if one starts counting how much are you spending. Luckily, that has not been the case for me,” says Chauhan
