Heena undertakes ammunition testing ahead of WC

Ace Indian shooter Heena Sidhu today underwent an ammunition test in a bid to finetune her preparations ahead of the upcoming ISSF World Cup here.

"We underwent testing of 19 different batches with different velocities that were available as pistol ammunition at the Eley ammunition testing facility in Fellbach and found something that consistently offered high accuracy from the barrel of Heena's 25m pistol, shooting coach Ronak Pandit said.

A total of 520 shots were fired over a period of four hours to find the best batch for Heena. The batch number has been reserved for and Heena will now be coordinating with the Eley company in the United Kingdom to import it with the financial support for the Target Olympic Podium (TOP) scheme and administrative support from the National Rifle Association of India.

"We use the best ammunition, Eley Tenex, which is also the most successful ammunition brand in the world. But even in the brand there are different batch numbers which give varying accuracies," Heena said.

"So despite using the best ammunition in the world, there could be variations in results with some shots say 1 in 15 which mean about 3-4 shots in a match could be flying off as much as 6-8mm away at 25m. That is a lot in a precision sport like shooting, the Commonwealth Games gold medallist added.

Heena thanked the NRAI and Sports Authority of India for organising the camp in Germany, where this ammunition testing facility could be availed by her and also some of her team mates.

"This testing will help get even better results from the existing technical skill levels," she said, urging the SAI to ensure that every year the top-5 ranked shooters across rifle and pistol are sent for a special ammunition and pellet testing camps.