Airline misplaces Rathore’s gun
New Delhi: The man with the golden gun, ace-shooter Lieutenant Colonel Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore returned home late on Wednesday night after a glittering performance in the Beijing Olympics qualifiers held in Egypt.
But it was not a happy homecoming for Rathore, who shot a gold at the ISSF shotgun world cup championship in Cairo.
The airline authorities misplaced his gun, and after a wait of nearly two hours, told him that it was not traceable.
“We flew Lufthansa Airlines and hope it’s a responsible airline. Unfortunately it’s not proving so. I just lost my gun today,” Rathore said.
The Athens Olympic Silver medallist pulled-off an amazing comeback in his double trap event at Cairo. He bagged a gold in the double trap of the same event on Sunday to pick a quota place for himself for the Beijing Games.
The army marksman topped the field with a score of 182 after making it to the finals through sudden death following a tied finish with Qiang Pan of China at the end of qualifying rounds.
“It was a typical movie situation. A guy is out of the final and he has to make a comeback. From a position of sixth, where my rival was four points ahead of me, I had to fight my way through in extremely windy conditions. I did it and the crowds loved it” Rathore said.
Rathore has had a great run this season. He began with shooting gold in the Melbourne Commonwealth Games and then followed it up with an eighth and sixth place finish in the first two shooting world cups.
All this against the very best in the world
“I need to push my level of performance higher up. My worst performance should be better than others’ best,” Rathore added.
Rathore shot a score of 137 (47+46+44) in the preliminaries but bounced back with an excellent 45 in the final in which he hit the bird in the last 10 rounds.
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