Kolkata: Mehuli Ghosh, the latest sensation of Indian shooting who had ended the year 2016 with a bang, winning two gold and seven silver medals in the 60th National Shooting Championship in Pune, will be carrying the burden of expectation of a billion when she will be leading the Indian shooting team in Junior Shooting World Championships in Suhl, Germany.
Mehuli, who would be off to Germany tomorrow is now at New Delhi. In an interaction with www.xtratime.in , Mehuli told, “Yes, I’m getting excited as well as a bit nervous. I am hopeful of performing well in the competition. I know, all the competitors from different nations will be coming to challenge me as they also have qualified through the qualifiers. But I’m focusing on my game.”
Riding on her success at the Nationals, Mehuli Ghosh seemed excited for the new mission when she will be competing in the 10 metres Air Rifle event in the World Championships. The 16-year-old shooter from Kolkata topped in all three categories she took part – Youth, Junior and Senior in the nationals.
Mehuli who is from Baidyabati, travels around 70 kilometers by road for training at the Joydeep Karmakar Shooting Academy (JKSA), at New Town, Kolkata.
Mehuli was saying, “Having Joydeep Sir as my coach is itself a huge motivation. He has seen all these over the years and his tips and training has helped me lot for my development as a shooter. Im sure I will be trying to count all I learned from him in the world championships.”
Mehuli’s mentor and coach Olympian Joydeep Karmakar is highly hopeful about his student. “Mehuli was very much harshly treated in her former club. She was morally very much shattered. My initial job was to prepare her mentally before going into the technical subtleties. I feel proud to have a student who takes all the little to very little things in her memories in serious attention. She keeps all these things in her memories and uses those to a good effect in every tough situation. This is her “X-Factor”, says Joydeep Karmakar.
“Mehuli’s biggest strength is that she is a very good student. All the hard work she did and I have put in to prepare her for this event has been a real story. She had to face a lot of impedimenTS. The SAI had kept her kits locked in our previous academy complex just before three weeks of the qualifiers”, says, Joydeep.
Joydeep is highly optimistic about a medal for Mehuli in the world championships and told XtraTime, “As much as I know her, if she can qualify for the final, which is almost 80% of the possibilities, I would say there would be a medal hope for India. The way she challenges herself in the final round, the tough mindset she has in such situations, can appear to be a deciding factor.