Abhishek Verma:A STORY OF A LAWYER WHO STARTS SHOOTING AS A HOBBY

 A STORY OF A LAWYER WHO STARTS SHOOTING AS A HOBBY

Abhishek Verma. Image Courtesy: Twitter

Shooting is now India’s biggest hope in upcoming Tokyo Olympic. The race is heating up and our shooters are ready to take on. They are in form, always trying to improve. Now how they will perform in big stage? That is the question rounding everywhere.

Most of the shooters of National Team are young. They are rising stars. The focus in 10m Air Pistol Event is on 18 year old Saurabh Chaudhary. He is in fantastic form and no doubt he is our one of the important athletes to take part in the Olympic. But don’t forget the beard guy from Panipat, Haryana. The 31 year old lawyer knows how to perform in big stage.

We are talking about Abhishek Verma, participating in the same 10m Air Rifle event, an engineer-cum-lawyer who has variety of hobbies like racing, archery, shooting. He is very fond of action movies and that inspired him to take part on the shooting game. Few years ago when he was studying law he took up shooting as a hobby but it soon became his profession. The last few years have been nothing but an amazing dream for him.

He holds BTech in computer science. While pursuing a degree in law, he took up shooting just for enjoying and using free time. It was 2014 when he first appeared in the Hisar’s shooting range. In 2017 after completion of his law degree, he ventured at Eklavya Shooting Academy in Gurgaon.

“The beginning was with rifle and then for a while I tried out my hands on pistol shooting but had to stop in middle due to my semester exams. I got back it in 2015 but it was still a hobby. It was only 2017 that I started to take it seriously,” said Abhishek in an interview on Firstpost.

He was selected for the Indian team in 2018 but failed to enter in the squad for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in April 2018. But his dream became successful when he had the news that he was going to represent the country in Jakarta 2018 Asian Games. He bagged the bronze in the individual event. This made him believe that he belonged to this level. Silver in team event in Changwon World Championships boosted his morale.

Year 2019 was a dream run for Abhishek Verma. The Asian games bronze medalist won gold medal in Beijing ISSF world cup and secured Tokyo Olympic quota. In August he again won Gold in Rio de Jeniro ISSF world cup by beating Turkey’s Ismail Keles and countryman Saurabh Chaudhary. In 2021 ISSF shooting world cup he secured bronze in Mixed Team event pairing up with Yashaswini Singh Deswal. He also clinched the bronze in Individual Event too and a Gold in Men’s team event, teammates being fellow countrymen Saurabh Chaudhary and Shahzar Rizvi.

Like all the other shooters, Abhishek is also calm and composed. Talking about pressure on performance in Rio he said to Sportstar, “There was a lot of pressure, but obviously I could not let that affect me. The yoga and meditation that we do are all for these moments precisely… It is all about how to perform when pressure is at the maximum on you. The difference was 0.1. For once I felt that if I mess this up all the efforts leading up to this would go waste. So pushing all these thoughts and the thought of a medal to the back of my mind, I concentrated on the target ahead of me.”

The focus on the teenage shooters doesn’t disturb him to go away from his aim. Incidentally in most of the tours Saurabh was his roommate and both enjoyed a happy time with each other. The teenager is very much active in Social Medias and it was heard that Saurabh forced Verma to open Twitter and Instagram Accounts.

He is looking forward to Tokyo Olympics. Abhishek told Sportstar, “more and more practice” will be the key to success. “Training and meditation, as I said earlier, will play a major role. The yoga routines will help achieve peak concentration. The main object level will be to increase concentration levels.” Along with participating in Individual event he most probably will be participating in freshly introduced Mixed Team event for Olympic with Yashaswini Singh Deswal.

The story of Abhishek Verma is a very interesting one but not an easy one. Just exploring variety of hobbies is a game but to go to top of professional level is the real achievement. He is a kind of a guy who has so many talents in different fields but the thing which makes him special is that he loves his work passionately and has the confidence to take on. And that is what making the whole nation dream for at least one Olympic medal from him of any possible colour.

An article by: Saikat Majumder

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