Members of North Calcutta Rifle Club celebrate Abhinav Bindra’s gold-winning performance in the Beijing Olympics on Monday. Picture by Amit Datta

When Abhinav Bindra struck gold in Beijing on Monday, Kuheli Ganguly celebrated the end of her anonymity in Calcutta.

Kuheli, 37, has been shooting since 1979. She has even won gold medals in rifle events at the Asian Championships and the Commonwealth Games. But it’s taken another shooter’s triumph on the biggest stage, the Olympics, for the veteran to feel she wasn’t wasting her time pursuing what is a lonely sport in many ways.

“People wouldn’t react when I told them that I was a shooter and had won Asian and Commonwealth gold medals. I was anonymous,” Kuheli, employed by the Central Industrial Security Force, told Metro.

Kuheli, one of only a handful of top shooters from Bengal, believes Abhinav’s feat will change the way youngsters in her home state approach shooting and people’s perception of the sport, too.

North Calcutta Rifle Club, where she has been training for nearly three decades, was set up before Independence and remains the only full-fledged facility in the city for those who want to pursue the sport. It now has 150 members, all of whom turned up at the range on Monday to celebrate Abhinav’s achievement.

“I always felt my daughter was wasting her time in the shooting range and that she would have been better off playing tennis. But after seeing all the accolades coming Abhinav’s way, I have realised that shooting has a bright future,” said Debarati Laha, whose 12-year-old daughter took up shooting six months ago.

But as almost everyone involved in the sport agrees, it will take an extraordinary effort for Calcutta to produce an Abhinav, whose parents set up a shooting range in their backyard for him to practise in whenever he wanted to.

“It’s a king’s sport,” P.K. Acharya, the chief coach of North Calcutta Rifle Club, said. “Very few people can afford to pursue shooting for a long period of time. It requires a lot of money.”

The equipment and gear recommended by the International Shooting Sport Federation are not available in the country. “They have to be imported from Germany. A rifle costs more than Rs 1 lakh. The gear is expensive, too,” Acharya said.

While North Calcutta Rifle Club is the first destination for anyone who wants to take up shooting, Space Circle — near Haldiram’s, on VIP Road — is an alternative. The club has a 7,000-square foot indoor arena with a 10-lane shooting zone that is just right for the 10-metre rifle category in which Abhinav won gold. The indoor range hosted the 2002 and 2003 state shooting championships.

“Only 10-15 people come to practise every day. Shooting doesn’t have the flamboyance of other sports like tennis, though Abhinav’s victory will definitely give it an instant boost,” said Sanjeev Ghosh, the general manager of Space Circle.

Arnab Chakraborty, who has won gold in four consecutive annual championships at Space Circle, is one of those who have stuck to shooting for the sheer love of the sport.

“I started shooting at North Calcutta Rifle Club when I was in Class IV. I became a member of Space Circle later and have been regularly practising there. But anyone who pursues this sport faces many difficulties. One of the problems is getting rifles of good quality. Getting a licence in India is difficult as well. You need to be well connected or have money,” the 20-year-old said.

A decade ago, 10 rounds of subsidised .22-bore ammunition would cost Rs 16. Each .22 round now costs Rs 20-22 in the market. “A shooter requires at least 75 rounds a day while preparing for a competition; so you can imagine how expensive this sport is,” Arnab said.

Air rifles available for Rs 2,000-Rs 2,500 are of poor quality. Anybody serious about shooting needs an Anschutz, which is of Russian make, or a US-made Diana. These rifles cost between Rs 70,000-1.5 lakh.

Kunal Bhattacharya, who has been shooting for the past three years, hopes Abhinav’s success will make it easier for others to continue pursuing the sport. “Cricket is a religion, but I think more and more youngsters will now be attracted to our sport,” he said.

— With inputs from Karo Christine Kumar