Gurgaon girl shines in national shotgun event, wins silver

GURGAON: It's pretty rare to come across someone winning a medal just six months after taking up a sport. But then, Bhavna Chaudhary is clearly out to defy the odds.
Bhavna, 17, returned with silver from the 60th National Shotgun Championship, held in Jaipur recently. She finished five points adrift in second spot, in the junior women's double trap competition. "To be very honest, as soon as I won silver, I was thinking that gold would definitely have been better! But then I thought, I should be content with what I have!" Bhavna, still on a high, told TOI.
Shotgun in hand, Bhavna seems a natural. In August, she won gold in the Haryana (state) shooting championship, and followed that up with another gold, in the North Zone shooting meet in October.
"I started with both pistol and shotgun. But using a firearm is something which excites me more. It takes up all of you, you feel more involved!" she enthuses. In double trap, participants take aim at two targets, released simultaneously; only one shot per target is allowed.
This being Bhavna's first nationals, there were nerves, which almost got the better of her. "When I started the round, I was literally shaking," she recalls. "I fired 275 bullets without a single double miss, but my very first shot in the finals was a double miss!" After three straight doubles-misses, Bhavna refocused, banishing all indecision from her head. "Instead of shooting in a carefree manner using my muscle memory, what I did was I started making sure of the targets. "Because if you think for a second, the target is gone, because it's flying, it's constantly moving."
This girl loves a challenge. So a couple of months before the nationals, she began training for the 'trap' (in which there's a single target). "My coach said that because of my fast reflexes, I'll do better in trap."
Bhavna's comeback suggests she's got the hunger for a fight. She turns 18 in December, and says she'd love to represent the country at the Olympics, but is mindful of the grind such an ambition entails.