Narang focussed on improving Olympic medals tally

New Delhi, Aug 20 (IANS) Olympic medallist Gagan Narang has asserted that he is focussed on developing talent from the grassroot level through his foundation to help India win as many medals as possible in shooting at the 2024 Olympics.

"My vision is to get the maximum number of Olympic medals in 2024 and beyond. Earlier we used to focus on the elite shooters. Now we are focusing on the grassroots. So we are bridging the gap completely," the 2012 London Olympic bronze medallist told IANS.

The 34-year-old, who won bronze in the men's 10m air rifle event, said his Gagan Narang Sports Promotion Foundation had started producing results with trainees Shreya Agrawal and para-shooter Swaroop Unhalkar bagging a silver each at the recently concluded 17th Kumar Surendra Singh (KSS) Memorial Shooting Championships.

"As far as the results are concerned, we already have three shooters in the first year," Narang said.

The Chennai-born revealed that apart from training the shooters, the academy would also focus on guiding the trainers through the newly-introduced Project Leap.

"We have three division of coaches - foreign, assistant and regional. Initially the assistant coaches will be trained under the foreign coaches and later the assistant coaches will give lessons to the regional coaches," Narang said.

He mentioned the different parameters through which the shooters would be selected to train in the academy.

"We are selecting 23 kids in the programme based on different parameters like neurocognitive and metacognitive. There has also been physical tests. Basically we select shooters who have qualified in nationals."