National Games shooting: Suruchi overshadows top stars, strikes gold

Inder Singh's daughter Suruchi Phogat transitions from wrestling to shooting, winning gold at National Games with determination and hard work.

Forever crazy about wrestling, Inder Singh wanted his daughter Suruchi Phogat to be in the sport too. The ex-Armyman came from Sasroli village in Haryana’s Jhajjar district, one of country’s leading wrestling belts, but with the little girl suffering a collar-bone injury following a fall she had to quit the sport after training for about six months. But Inder wanted his daughter to do some sport.

“One day in 2019, my father and I entered a shooting range. And I was very interested to see the shooters there,” said Suruchi, in a chat with The Hindu, at the Trishul Shooting Range here on Wednesday.

That journey brought the 18-year-old her maiden National Games gold in the women’s 10m air pistol event (245.7 points) today. She had announced her arrival in December while winning the senior, junior and youth 10m air pistol golds at the New Delhi Nationals in December.

There were some big names in the event here, like Paris Olympian Rhythm Sangwan, another seasoned Olympian Rahi Sarnobat and Asian Games gold medallist Palak Gulia. But Suruchi was not perturbed.

“I was confident of winning gold because I topped yesterday’s qualification too. Nobody is my challenger, I’m my own challenger,” she said.

Haryana’s Palak (243.6) and Punjab’s Simranpreet Kaur Brar (218.8) took the silver and bronze respectively while Rahi was fourth.

Incidentally, double Olympic bronze medallist Manu Bhaker also comes from Jhajjar and it’s wonderful to see another young talent popping up from the district.