Inspired by Abhinav Bindra, Shambhavi beats double Olympic medallist at Junior Worlds and wants to follow in her footsteps

A few days before Shambhavi Kshirsagar was to fly out to Germany for the ISSF Shooting Junior World Championships, the topic of the competition she was up against came up in a conversation with her father.

“She is obsessed with shooting. Her entire day goes either in shooting or preparing for it. And if its neither of them, then she will be talking about it. We were talking about the World Championships and I asked her who her strong opponents were going to be. She immediately spoke about Huang Yuting and started talking about all the medals she had won,” says Shravan Kshirsagar.

Although the 17-year-old was competing in her second Junior World Championships at Suhl, she was outclassed, at least in terms of accomplishments, by Yuting. At just 18, the Chinese shooter is already a double Olympic medallist, winning a silver in the women’s 10m air rifle event and gold in the 10m air rifle mixed team event at last year’s Games in Paris.

Shravan was wondering if he might have hurt his daughter’s confidence, especially by bringing up the quality of the field she was up against. “Even I have trained well. I’ll see when I get there,” he recalls her saying.

Shambhavi would do just that, beating Yuting in the final of the women’s 10m air rifle competition to become India’s latest Junior World Champion in the marquee women’s event. Earlier in the competition, she had qualified in second place, with a score of 633.1, just 0.1 behind compatriot Ojasvi Thakur (633.2).

A day after winning gold in the individual category, Shambhavi would also win a bronze in the mixed team event on Sunday. All in all, it’s been a good return for the 17-year-old. Her ambitions have only grown now. “Now I want to make a name for myself in the senior category as well,” she says.

Shambhavi might be the latest shooting talent to emerge from Kolhapur—Asian Games pistol gold medallist Rahi Sarnobat and World Championship rifle gold medallist Tejaswini Sawant both hail from the town in Central Maharashtra— but she wasn’t always interested in being a shooter.

She preferred more dynamic events. “I actually started learning karate and dance when I was young. But I wasn’t so good at it so my parents were looking for another sport to put me in,” she says.

Inspired by Bindra

It was her father Shravan who thought of introducing Shambhavi to shooting. The then 12-year-old didn’t take to it at first.

“I thought shooting might be good for her because Kolhapur has a lot of history in shooting. But in the first two months, her coach only had her practise her stance and the holding of the rifle. She got very bored because she at least wanted to shoot some shots,” he says.

Shambhavi says she was thinking of restarting her dance practice when coincidentally her school intervened.

“We were having a class where we were introduced to different Indian sportspersons. I was given an article to read on Abhinav Bindra. When I was reading his achievements and how he won the Olympic gold medal, I got very inspired. I decided I would give shooting one more chance,” she says.

While she was motivated, Shravan says the results didn’t come immediately. “When she started she was very small for the rifle. She couldn’t even hold it properly. Her coach Santosh Jadhav said that it would take at least a year for her to start getting any results,” he says.

But that patience paid off. Shambhavi started off by winning competitions organised at her range before starting to perform at the State, and finally at the national level when she won four medals at the GV Mavalankar Shooting championships in 2023. The following year she would compete for the Indian team at the Junior World Cup in Granada, where she won a bronze in the women’s 10m air rifle competition, and then the Junior World Championships in Lima where she finished fifth in the final but won a gold in the women’s team.

While she finished without a medal, Shambhavi’s performance at last year’s World Championships was particularly impressive when you consider the fact that she was training without a coach at that point. She had moved out of Kolhapur after starting junior college at Pune’s Fergusson College last year, and although she had continued to train at the Balewadi sports complex, she had been training by herself.

Although she was still good enough to make the Indian team, Shambhavi wanted more. After an average result at the National Games where she scored 628 in qualification, she decided to shift to Delhi in order to start training with current coach Deekshant Jadhav.

“It isn’t an easy decision since Shambhavi is still studying. But Shambhavi felt she needed to move here if she had to improve as a shooter, so we have taken a flat on rent near the Karni Singh Shooting Range. Her mother stays with her so that it’s easier for her to train,” says Shravan.

Big scores

That move has paid off. At last month’s Khelo India Youth Games, Shambhavi shot a career-high 635.7 in the qualification round and romped to gold in the final. Now, despite winning the Junior World Championship gold, Shambhavi is not resting on her laurels.

“There are a lot of places I want to improve. I came to the World Championships with the target of shooting 636 in qualification. I wasn’t able to achieve that. But it’s motivation to keep pushing myself,” she says.

A win over an Olympic gold medallist isn’t enough either. “I feel good that I’ve managed to beat an Olympic champion. My own confidence has grown. But it is one thing to beat an Olympic champion at the junior world championships. But I want to be able to do this at the Olympics also. That’s my goal,” she says.