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The National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) made major amendments to the selection policy for Indian shooters for the 2024 Paris Olympics. There has been a massive cut in the bonus points for the shooters who earned an Olympic quota for the country.
The shooters in the fire-arm category will be awarded two bonus points for earning an Olympic quota. Moreover, there is just one point for the shooters in the air gun events.
Categories such as 10m air pistol and 10m air rifle fall under fire-arm and the air gun includes 50-metre rifle three positions, sports pistol and rapid-fire pistol events.
Earlier, the shooters with Olympic quotas were awarded a maximum of 10 bonus points, subject to the medal won at a particular event. A gold medalist at the World Championship fetched 10 points, while a fourth-place finish guaranteed five points. A gold medalist at a World Cup got six bonus points, while silver and bronze medals awarded them four and two bonus points, respectively.
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In its meeting on Wednesday, November 15, the NRAI governing body decided to reduce the bonus points drastically for the winners of the Olympic quotas.
“This (NRAI technical) committee does not wish to take away the individual achievement of the sportsperson from achieving this laudable milestone of winning an Olympic quota place," the statement from NRAI read.
“The winner of the quota place will be entitled to get Quota points while calculating FAS -- fire arm events (2 points), air fun events (1 point)," it further added.
Why such a huge step from NRAI on bonus points?
The NRAI has decided to select the shooters based on the final average score (FAS) from the four Olympic selection trials. A shooter eligible to participate must compete in three of the four trials, however, the FAS will only be calculated when the player turns up for four selection trial events.
The Olympic quota points to the winners will be added to their final FAS points.
"The policy is based on each shooter getting Final Average Score (FAS). The FAS will be computed by taking the average of the top 3 Olympic selection trials scores plus the (Olympic) quota bonus point (QBP) to arrive at FAS,” the NRAI mentioned.
Following the medal drought at the 2016 and 2020 Olympic events in Rio and Tokyo, respectively, the NRAI wants the consistent shooters to feature in the Paris Olympics. The earlier bonus system allowed Olympic quota winners to have a massive advantage over the rest of the shooters in the trials.
The form of shooters is likely to dip from the qualifying events to the period of the Olympics. The fact that an Olympic quota earned by an individual in any specific category is awarded to the country (NOC) allows the national federation's discretion to play a key role in the selection.
The NRAI will announce the dates and venue for the shooting trials in due course.
List of Indian shooters with Olympic quotas:
