Shooting World Championships: Rudrankksh Patil leads Indian challenge in Cairo, his happy hunting ground

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Rudrankksh Patil may be an ace shooter the world over, but Cairo turns him into something out of this world. When Patil stepped foot in the Egyptian capital in 2022, the defining moment of his time there was when his name was called out and he climbed the podium to become India’s second-ever gold medallist at the World Championships – a feat that was only ever done by Abhinav Bindra before him. A year later, Patil won a World Cup gold medal over there as well.

Now 21, he returns along with the Indian team looking to kickstart yet another Olympic cycle – one where there will be two World Championships before the 2028 LA Olympics. The first of which starts in Cairo from Saturday and doesn’t carry Olympics quotas. For Patil, this World Championship is all about testing all the work he has put in this year.

“It can go well. It can absolutely go bad. But I’m quite confident that if I follow what I’ve been doing now in training everything will be good,” said Patil.

The uncertainty in his words comes from the fact that this is an odd time to have the World Championships by itself. And the new format dictated by the sport’s world body means that the two World Championships in an Olympic year format is here to stay.

But the athletes and coaches aren’t too keen on it.

Most of the Indian shooting team has spent this year in skill development in three different national camps. This World Championships has become about bringing in new faces and helping the older ones get into the groove for a massive 2026 – one where they will be a part of the Asian Games in Aitchi-Nagoya, then another World Championship in Doha.

A sport where so much of the onus is on being present mentally, an extra Worlds has had its effects with even coaches considering how far to push athletes, especially considering the packed 2026 calendar. India has sent a 40-member team to Cairo with representation in all ten Olympic events. But the buildup has had to be gradual.

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“We check the endurance of shooters and by the time we reached the Asian Championships in Kazakhstan 6-7 months into this year, we could see that exhaustion,” says Deepali Deshpande, the rifle coach of the national team.

It has also meant that newer faces had to be introduced. For rifle shooter Vishal Singh, who will line up with Patil and Olympian Arjun Babuta, this will be the first-ever international seniors event. For Shreya Agrawal, a junior bronze world championship medallist, this senior Worlds will be her first as well.

In pistol, Paris Olympics bronze medallist Sarabjot Singh isn’t part of the team, but Suruchi Singh Phogat, who joined the team this year and stormed to three World Cup gold medals and the No 1 rank in the world, headlines the women’s pistol shooting team that has Manu Bhaker, Esha Singh and Rahi Sarnobat.

The one thing going for these World Championships will be the level of competition. Even with no quotas on offer and another Worlds coming up in a year, some of the lesser experienced Indian shooters have the opportunity to test themselves against the best in the world.

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“Where we are actually standing at the world stage now, whatever we have won in World Cups or Asian and anything, whatever we have won so far, this is actually a real test of what we did in the entire year. And then accordingly, we need to plan our strategies for the next year. How much more work we need to put in, that this competition will tell us,” said Deshpande.