Gagan Narang’s mission is to produce Olympic medalists from Hyderabad

Although India’s shooters did not live up to expectations at the Tokyo Olympics, former champion shooter Gagan Narang is confident that the sport will bounce back and India will soon win medals in international shooting competitions again.
What is more, if Gagan’s efforts bear fruit, the next medal winner may be from Hyderabad or Secunderabad. Gagan, who is himself a bronze medalist of the London Olympics in 2012, has got three coaching centres running full swing in the twin cities to spot and train talented boys and girls into champion shooters. Eight coaches have been training about 100 shooters from the twin cities and efforts are on to develop them into top class medal winners.
His Gagan Narang Sports Promotion Foundation (GNSPF) project spread over several cities in India, has already helped to produce several top level shooters including 8 Olympians, 205 international shooters, 1100 national shooters and 1538 state level shooters. 1200 trainees are undergoing coaching in several centres all over India. Elavenil Valarivan, who took part in the Tokyo Olympics, is one of the products of the scheme. The Gun For Glory academies have produced national champions and champion para athletes.
But Gagan laments that it is just one percent of the huge 1300 million population of India who participate in sports. Speaking to  siasat.com  he said: “We need to have more people taking part in sports of different types. No doubt our haul of seven medals at the Tokyo Olympics was an encouraging sign but considering our population, the number of medals we obtained should have been higher. This will happen only if more people take part in sports.” “In our project it is our aim to set up academies with sustainable infrastructure, make the fees affordable, remove entry level barriers, provide experts in sports sciences, ensure continuous talent development and introduce innovative programmes for training talent from all over India,” said Gagan.
“The reason why development often lags behind is because the training is unstructured. Besides, there is very limited awareness among the public of what avenues are open to professional sports persons. Nobody knows what will happen if their children take up sports as a profession,” he said.