‘It is cheaper to train in Italy than it is to train In India’: 5-time Asian Championship medallist Maheshwari Chauhan

If you follow shotgun shooting in India, you would know that many of the athletes choose to train abroad. Now, you might think that the main reason for that is the superior infrastructure and access to high-quality equipment, and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. But talk to an Indian shotgun shooter who trains abroad regularly and what becomes clear is that the number one reason why they prefer to train abroad, especially in a country like Italy, is because of the costs. The first impression you might get is that training abroad is very expensive, but it’s actually the opposite. Training in India, because of multiple reasons, is actually more expensive than training in Italy.

In an extremely candid and free-wheeling interview, Indian skeet shooter and 5-time Asian Championship medallist, Maheshwari Chauhan, who narrowly missed out on a medal at the Paris Olympics last year, talks about all the reasons why she, along with many other shooters from India prefer to train in Italy – a country where shotgun shooting in particular is intrinsically intertwined with their culture.

Also Read | Maheshwari Chauhan Interview Part One: ‘In my formative years, I don’t think we were learning the right way’

In the second part of an exclusive interview, Maheshwari also talks about why she feels now is the best time for budding sport-shooters in India to take up the sport and the unwavering support that Indian shooters are receiving from bodies like the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI), which is the governing body of sport-shooting in the country and the Sports Authority of India (SAI). As someone who has spent over a decade in the ‘system’, Maheshwari also talks about the conversations that are taking place in Indian shooting about certain things that potentially need to change in the sport, especially the domestic calendar, which in turn makes the entire season absolutely punishing and stops Indian shooters from being ‘fresh’ at the beginning of a new year –  something that is the exact opposite of what happens in the traditional shooting powerhouses in the west.

Also, what are some of the other big obstacles that are stopping India from becoming a global skeet-shooting powerhouse and how can we tackle them? Who better to talk to about this than someone who has competed at the highest international levels and was the first Indian female skeet shooter to win an individual medal at an international event?

Maheshwari is also in the process of changing her gun and talks about how challenging that is for a sport-shooter to do, along with a very important requirement to being a successful female athlete in India, in any sport – rock-solid family support.

This is Part Two of an exclusive interview with Maheshwari Chauhan.

You talked about your foreign training earlier. In March this year, you were training in Italy with your personal coach. There are also National camps. How challenging is it for a professional shooter to balance career and personal life?

Maheshwari Chauhan: Extremely challenging. I don’t know about all professional athletes because I do have a lot of friends in Europe or the western countries (and) they have a very ‘set’ system. The approach to sports is far more professional (in the West) where there is an off-season, then there is an intense season. Everything is wired around how to approach the season. Unfortunately, we (in India) are not in a place where we have an off-season. And that is where Indian athletes have a disadvantage. We never go fresh into a new year, unless we are sitting out of the team or there is a medical issue and we have completely stepped away from the game. I would not like to speak on anyone’s behalf, but that has been my personal experience and what has happened with me, every time. I completely quit the game in 2018 after the Commonwealth Games, later that year. I sat out of the team all of 2019 and then there was Covid for two years and I was thinking – ‘I am done with the game’. It was only in 2022 that I picked up the gun again and it was the best decision that I could have made – to consciously step away.

It wasn’t a decision that I had made very strategically. It was a decision that I made because I was extremely burnt-out and exhausted. I was dealing with far too much, having too little knowledge about how to deal with any of those issues. The ISSF calendar starts around mid-March to March-end and it finishes around September or sometimes around the first week of October. And that is when the European season stops. So, around 1st September the season stops across Europe and then it starts again around February (the next year). So, they (in Europe) have around five months off in a year. Barring the few athletes who are competing in the last competition at the end of the year, let’s say the World Championships this year in October – some of the athletes (from a country) participate in it and the rest of the athletes completely put their guns down for 3-4 months. It’s impossible to be in form always. It’s impossible to win everything. That’s just not how sports work. We (in India) actually go into compete for our most important season, which is our domestic season – because that’s what enables us to be part of the team that shoots internationally – when the (international) season stops. Our National Championships to the domestic team trials – we usually go through three trials in one National squad before our best three (scores) are counted to be in the (Indian) team – so, the moment we are back from international competitions, we are back at the range preparing for the Nationals. Then we are back at the range after a two-day rest, shooting the trials. That is something which I don’t think is very conducive to high performance. But there is definitely a lot of conversation around it. There are more professionals who have stepped into the game and everyone feels that ‘this can’t go on’. They are all working to change it.

I have decided to not shoot the World Championships (ISSF Shotgun World Championship will run from October 8-19 in Athens, Greece) because I wanted to take some time off. It seemed important to me. I haven’t stopped training since 2022.

The work-life balance being skewed is such a common story across so many different fields of work in our country…

Maheshwari Chauhan: I would like to point out one thing. Yes, sports can be put in the same category as ‘work’, but people sometimes forget that sports isn’t a 9-5 job, it’s a lifestyle. It’s not like – ‘okay, I worked Monday- Friday and now I am going to party over the weekend’. If you want to beat the top athletes in your game and you are looking at winning an Olympic medal, then you don’t get to have that (fixed timings and work schedule), because there is nothing bigger than discipline and consistency, nothing. Again, these are things that you realise much later when you have been around (for a while) and have picked up some experience. It’s a lifestyle. You have to live it. It (sport) can be extremely consuming. Sport takes all of you. You don’t get to give it just some of you. You can’t say – ‘I train three hours because that’s all I can do.’ It’s the most demanding thing out there. It will take 100% out of you to give back maybe 10%.

As someone who goes abroad quite often and trains there and sees the systems that are in place there, when you come back here perhaps you feel that certain things ideally should change? Whether someone is actually going to do it, whether it will happen sometime in the future, that’s anyone’s guess, but as athletes, as professional shooters, do you have these conversations amongst yourselves or maybe even with the authorities from time to time, that maybe there are certain things that could change just to make life easier for everybody? 

Maheshwari Chauhan: Of course, of course. There is always room for improvement everywhere. Every place has its pros and cons. One of the reasons why, not just me but all shotgun shooters from across the world and especially those from Southeast Asia, Asia and especially India like to go and train in Europe, especially in Italy, is because training is really cheap there. The ammunition is manufactured in Italy. We pay a lot in India. So, for me, it is cheaper to train in Italy than it is to train In India. And that’s why we travel, because you are loading up on ammunition and training, using 500-600 shells a day and your overall costs are much lesser there (in Europe, particularly Italy) than here (in India). Also, there are very few ranges in India whereas in Italy there is a range every 30-50 kms because it is such a part of their culture there.

It seems like everything is so nice outside but even they have their own challenges. With more and more travel and experience I have learnt things. People always say that there is not enough sport in India, but that is very far from the truth. People say – ‘there are no funds’, but there are funds, they are just not sent the right way, when it’s needed. I feel like we mislead ourselves a lot with that. The biggest strength of Indian shooting and the fact that India is doing well today is because our federation (NRAI) supports us a lot. And I am not saying that to favour anything or anyone. All Indian athletes when they are representing India in any competition, any Grand Prix of World Cup or World Championship, we are completely funded by the SAI (Sports Authority of India). Trust me, no other country, including the USA, who have so many Olympic golds, (their athletes) have to sometimes travel paying out of their own pockets to represent their countries.

That is the best thing that our country does for us. But yes, when it comes to training, the right professionals who are consistently working, they (foreign countries in Europe and also USA) have it far more sorted than we do. Here, anyone who is working along with the Government has to have a government job approach. So, people change, they swap, so you are never working with the same professionals. So, you have to fight to have the same professionals so that you have a consistent team over a season or cycle. These are the kind of things that we struggle with. A lot of people end up having their own personal set-up because that’s the only way to move forward. So, I think every place has its pros and cons, but if anyone had to pick a time to enter shooting in India, now is the time. I don’t think we have been in a better position than what we are in currently.

That’s interesting. Not too many conversations happening around what you just mentioned – that now is a great time for budding shooters to enter the sport…

Maheshwari Chauhan: For sure. I have been involved with sports in India for little more than a decade now. While my whole approach to get here took a decade, but the fact that there’s conversation and something being done – it doesn’t happen overnight and a lot has to change, so at least there is (some) change. It’s so easy to complain and be negative. There will always be issues, but then which aspect of life doesn’t have issues? It’s better to focus on what’s going right and the kind of professionals we are fortunate to have today. Some countries can’t afford to bring in professionals like them. And I know SAI (Sports Authority of India) is paying them a lot, just so that they can be around us and that’s huge. There is a reason why Indian shooting is performing the way it is, there is a reason why you have taken out so much time from your day to talk to a shotgun athlete. We are the highest Olympic performing individual event for India. So, yes, now is a good time (to enter shooting) and it’s always good to count your blessings and move ahead than sit and complain about what’s not going right because there will always be things that don’t go well.

You spoke about the ‘being the first’ approach to things earlier. When it comes to being the first in something, you know a thing or two about that yourself. You were the first Indian to win an individual international event medal in women’s skeet. I wanted to talk to you a little more about the sport itself. I have heard people say that skeet shooting, unfortunately, is not what one would call a ‘glamorous’ discipline of shooting like rifle or pistol, but why do you think that is the case, considering it’s so enjoyable and thrilling to watch?

Maheshwari Chauhan: It is. But first-up, to take up the sport professionally in our country is a huge challenge. Let’s talk about the most basic things. What do you need? You need a gun. If you don’t have an arms’ license you can’t have a gun. It is close to impossible to get an arms’ license in our country if you just apply for it. You need to qualify for the Nationals and get an aspiring shooters’ letter, then work your way through the system for a year to three years to maybe get an arms’ license. Then purchasing a weapon. The gun cannot be a standard one, you need to have a custom fit gun. The stock (the part of a rifle or shotgun that the shooter holds against their shoulder and cheek to provide stability and support for aiming) needs to be customised and then depending on you gaining height or weight, the stock keeps changing. To customise the stock, it could cost anywhere between Rs. Sixty-seventy thousand to about three and half to four lakhs. That too is not done in India. You have to travel to Europe – Italy or Germany to have a stock that fits you. If you had to buy a new very standard Beretta gun, it would cost you about eight-nine thousand Euros.

You are spending a huge amount of money every day, but you can’t really focus on that because you have to be focused on training and the right kind of training, ammunition and clays (targets). This is all very expensive. There is no support as such at the initial level, so you have to manage it yourself. Even if you are fortunate enough to have support, the funds that would be sufficient for any other game or athlete will barely be half of what you need if you are a shotgun shooter. So, getting a foundation or a CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility arm of a corporate) to help you. Say, even if Rs. eight-ten lakhs were covered for a rifle or pistol athlete – if you don’t look at heavy international training – you can manage training in India on your own at an academy easily for half a year or more with that much. In shotgun you can barely survive two months with that if you get international training. These are just all the technical points. Today we (in India) can boast about having 30 women in skeet and that’s why your top six or your top nine is what I would call very talented, very hardworking, approaching the game professionally. We are talking about 30 athletes and we have two medals and that I think is quite good, because in rifle and pistol we have three thousand athletes per event and then you are in the top three. Any basic World Cup with about 60-70 countries participating you don’t have more than 100 athletes or so competing. The Indian athletes, in rifle and pistol events, when they go there, they have beaten three thousand hard-working Indians. There’s a far greater chance for them to be in the final because they have dealt with such high-level domestic competition.

The Indian team trials are very high-scoring, more high-scoring than the World Cups themselves. But we can’t say the same for shotgun (athletes). That’s because you need to put in a lot of resources of your own, be involved with the game around the clock, manage everything yourself, travel for every trial in different locations. We just don’t have that level of competition domestically. I give the biggest credit to my teammates and my competitors, domestically, because if the girls didn’t work so hard and push me around the clock, I would sit comfortably, feeling (almost) entitled to be in the team. A lot of good competition is needed for shotgun to be at the same level (as rifle and pistol).

I read that you are also changing your gun. Talk to me a little bit about that. How difficult is it for a shooter to do this?

Maheshwari Chauhan: It’s definitely a really big change. It can work either way. It (new gun) can fit like a glove and work really well or you can struggle with it, but you do end up getting used to it. It’s necessary for me (to change her gun). Like I said, I don’t like to have too many variables so I don’t like to change too much. I have had the same gun for the last six years. It’s been working well so I didn’t feel the need to touch it or fix it, but now it has just aged a lot and I have used it far more than the gun was supposed to be used. I need to change my gun. It’s not that I (suddenly) decided – ‘let’s change the gun’, it was the need of the hour. I can’t go through another entire season of shooting sixty-seventy thousand shells out of this gun. It will not hold itself together.

What has shooting meant to you personally? Is it, in a way, your safe space – your almost spiritual guide, because sport does mean that to some people…

Maheshwari Chauhan: It definitely is because nothing has taught me more and given me more of a sense of self than this game. All my educational years combined have not taught me the kind of things that this game has taught me. It’s made me travel the world, it’s given me a huge sense of belonging and a great sense of self. So much freedom and understanding of who I am, how to make decisions, how to stand by myself and such real and practical things. Like they say – ‘the sport doesn’t belong to anyone but we all belong to the sport’ and I definitely belong to it.

We have talked about the support you are getting from the federation and from SAI etc. But looking ahead, as someone who is in the thick of things and who has had so much experience of being an Indian shooter who has been competing at the top most levels, when you look at the traditional skeet shooting powerhouses, like the Americans or the Italians – what are the major obstacles that you can think of that are stopping India from becoming a global skeet shooting powerhouse…

Maheshwari Chauhan: For them (USA, Italy and other skeet shooting powerhouses) the game is a lot more cultured. The biggest strength that the Italians have is that they are very good with the technique and they hone it from a very young age, because they have events like ‘sporting’ (Sporting Clays – a form of clay pigeon shooting that simulates the unpredictability of live-quarry shooting) that they pick up as young as ten years old. Same in America. In India we are completely and totally dependent on having foreign technical coaches guiding us, because we just don’t have enough of that base culture. We know the words of the game, but we don’t know the alphabet very well. And that’s exactly why it takes us that much longer (to pick up skeet shooting). It literally took me a decade to understand what I was doing properly and it’s not because I am dumb (laughs). It’s because I didn’t have the knowledge before that.

In Italy people don’t depend on coaches. In total they don’t have more than ten days of national camps, around the year. Their camps last three days (each) for a World Cup. They just train on their own and they can do that because they understand what they are doing very well. We were (also) training on our own, but unfortunately, we just don’t have the knowledge of the basics of the game, how to naturally do it, because we don’t have a shooting culture. For them (Europeans in particular and also Americans) hunting is a part of their routine, especially in the winters. So, a lot of hunters become sporting-shooters and they end up playing skeet. Sporting is a far more challenging discipline with crazy angles and different speeds and multiple variations. So, for a lot of the sporting-athletes who take up skeet, it is a cakewalk. It’s much easier (for them). We don’t have that. We don’t have sporting (Sporting Clays) ranges in India. Skeet is the most challenging (discipline) we have. We just don’t know the basics of the game very well.

It boils down to what is part of the culture and what is not…   

Maheshwari Chauhan: Yes. You look at cricket – why are there such good cricketers? It’s because there are people playing cricket in every gully, in every little parking spot, every little ground. It’s a different culture.

One final question – No athlete can really pursue their passion without the right kind of family support. I wanted to wrap this up by talking to you about the family support that you have had, over the years…

Maheshwari Chauhan: My greatest strength has been my family support which has primarily been my parents. The building blocks – me coming from a really small town in Rajasthan and coming from a background of privilege, where I was very fortunate to have the set-up and the parents that I have had – I wasn’t pushed to do anything. For many years, I was just figuring it out and there was no pressure that – ‘this is how you have to do it, we are spending so much, so you must have these results’, none of that. Till today, even when I went to the Olympics, there are only two things my parents say – ‘eat well and enjoy’. That’s it. ‘Take care of yourself, be happy’. They will ask me – ‘did you enjoy?’ and I might say – ‘but I shot horribly, so no I didn’t enjoy’ and they will say – ‘ok, then just go and enjoy’.

The kind of freedom it gave me to understand and navigate my entire journey myself, calling the shots, taking responsibility, no matter what the results were because I was not forced by anybody. They didn’t say – ‘you have to coach with so and so’. They never interfered. At 16, they supported me and trusted me enough to make my own decision. At 16. They were always supporting me, saying – ‘sure, whatever you need’. Every time I made a decision, I could stand by it. It was always me taking responsibility and never feeling bad about it because I had my parents supporting me. I never had to look outside to get this kind of approval and support and validation from anyone. I had it at home, from my whole family. Even when things were difficult at home, everyone was supportive. I have a brother who is younger than me and he would say – ‘whatever my sister needs comes first’. He is a cinematographer and even if he needed really expensive equipment for filmmaking he would say – ‘if she needs to go for more international training then I can wait another year.’ It’s just phenomenal. It’s been my biggest blessing and it’s been my biggest reward, having the kind of family that I do. It is impossible to survive in anything perhaps, but more so in sports as a female athlete in India if you don’t have a really strong support system at home. It is impossible.

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