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Narmada Nithin Raju, a rifle shooter from Tamil Nadu, has hogged the spotlight after her historic performance at the 38th National Games in Dehradun, Uttarakhand on Thursday, January 30.
Narmada went on to clinch the gold medal in the women’s 10m air rifle event at the Maharana Pratap Sports College, breaking the national record with a score of 254.4. Unfortunately, she missed out on the world record by a score of 0.1.
What made her win special was she was competing against the likes of Asian Games medallist Ramita Jindal and Olympian Elavenil Valarivan. Notably, she failed to qualify for the final at the National Games 2022 in Gujarat and secured the seventh spot at the National Games 2023 in Goa.
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The ups and downs in Narmada Nithin Raju’s career
Narmada Nithin Raju was born in February 2001 to a family of a sports professor and an engineer. While her father was the sports-in-charge at IIT Madras, her mother was an engineer. Interestingly, her father wanted Narmada to become an English professor since childhood.
Despite not being encouraged to take part in sports, Narmada represented in athletics as a child. She went on to study for her degree in English Literature. Surprisingly, Narmada’s father was a very close friend of Elavenil Valarivan’s father as they had known each other since their bachelor days.
In 2018, Elavenil’s father invited Narmada’s father to a shooting training range and convinced him to let her take shooting as a sport. She then moved to the Gun for Glory Academy in Chennai to start her training.
In 2019, Narmada was gifted her very own kit by her mother, costing several lakhs after taking a loan. Interestingly, she still uses the same Walther gun. She went on to secure her first junior national title in 2019.
However, she was infected with COVID twice. Nevertheless, she made a strong comeback, making her national debut at the Cairo World Cup 2023, winning the gold medal in the mixed-team event with Rudrankksh Patil.
Unfortunately, Narmada Nithin Raju failed to make the cut for the Indian 10m air rifle team for the Paris Olympics 2024 during the selection trials.
