Prolific shooter Kishmala qualifies for Olympics

Talented Kishmala Talat made history on Monday as she became the first women shooter of the country to qualify for the Olympics.

The 21-year-old bagged the silver medal at the Asian Olympic Qualification 10m pistol women’s event in Jakarta with a total of 236.3 points to secure her place in the 2024 Paris Olympics on quota.

She was only behind India’s Esha Singh who gathered 243.1 points to clinch the gold medal while another Indian, Rhythm Sangwan finished with a bronze medal with 214.5 points.

Just last year, the university student made history as well when she grabbed a bronze medal when she became the first Pakistani woman shooter to win at the Asian Games.

“Kishmala has made the country very proud, and yes she is the first women shooter to qualify for Olympics from Pakistan,” The National Rifle Association of Pakistan Secretary Razi Ahmed Khan told The Express Tribune.

“She has been very consistent; she only began participating in international events in the last three years. She is a young shooter and what separates her from others is her ability to perform well in international events, she sustains an excellent level of performance easily in high pressure competitions. It is her mentality that she thrives under pressure which is impressive, and she has done very well for Pakistan, she had been training regularly. This is all a result of hard work and consistent training.

“I can say that we are expecting another medal from women in Jakarta. You see women are better suited for shooting, that is what the statistics and research say. When I was training in Germany, we saw that women excel at shooting events and perform better than men, and I am glad that these girls are doing so well. We started the shooting programs for girls specifically so that we can train them for international competitions.”

In an article for ESPN, Jonathan Selvaraj quoted research and spoke to experts that confirmed that women are equally good as men in shooting air rifle 10m event at least if not better than men. They even defeated top men shooters in unofficial competitions too.

Pakistan is fielding five shooters at the Asian Qualification event. Khan remarked that out of five there are three women and two men.

Kishmala joins GM Bashir and Gulfam Joseph who qualified for Paris Olympics earlier.

Khan has been associated with shooting sports for decades and he has seen all the Pakistani shooters starting their careers from initial stages.

He said that the Rawalpindi-based athlete, Kishmala, received a short training camp from the Russian coach that the NRAP have been working with recently.

“The shooters got a 10-day camp by the Russian coach whose services we acquired with the help of the Asian Shooting Confederation,” said Khan.

He sid that the Russian coach has been training Pakistani athletes for a long time now, earlier he prepared GM Bashor and Gulfam for the qualification events as well, while Kishmala trained with him for Asian Games as well.

“We have had two training camps with this coach and the results have been good, now we will be arraninging another soon, hopefully in Pakistan.

When asked if shooting is popular among women in Pakistan, he said that the NRAP has been working to develop the sport, they hold regular summer camps to encourage young boys and girls to train, in the last camp he said that there were 100 girls out of the 250 participants. Similarly, they helped inter-university champions as well to skim the best talent.

“Of course, we need to make double the effort to get the women shooters to training and camps, but it is all worth it.

“Pakistani women can excel at this, like historically shooting was one of those sports where men and women competed in the same event, and there weren’t any separate events. Women have been performing well and challenging men,” said Khan. It was until 1980 Olympic Games that women and men competed in mixed competitions.

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