Sidhu, at 26 twelve years younger than Bhagwat, says her pulse rate is getting faster as the competition approaches. “We can’t avoid thinking we are shooting in the Olympic Games. I keep reminding myself, be calm, it’s just another sequence of 40 shots.”

It’s a mental sport, she agrees. Just with the first shot, it’s possible to know if she’s in the zone or not. And even when that’s known, the mental battle continues. Sometimes when she starts out shooting so well, she must tell herself to not get carried away headily, to come back to the ground and be focused.

Curiously, shooting, submits Thomas, has an effect on the nerves of the rest of the Indian contingent, coming as it does in the earliest days of the Games. It has, with Rajyavardhan Rathore’s medal in the double trap at Athens, broken the silver barrier for individual achievement at the Olympics. That, he argues, has not increased the pressure on shooters, it has actually lessened it forever, having established it’s doable. He recalls that at Athens, athletes like Anju Bobby George and Beenamol told him, get something in shooting, so tension will be reduced overall. After Rathore did what he did, Thomas told them, “now the rest is up to you.” But the point, he finishes, is not to obliterate tension: “Without tension you cannot shoot.”

Shooting range hall

•Located in Shijingshan district and spread over an area of 45, 645 sq m, the Beijing Shooting Range Hall will host all 11 shooting events at the 2008 Olympics.

... contd.