Mumbai: Ace shooter Heena Sidhu hit out at Thursday at the country’s chief pistol coach Pavel Smirnov, stating that he is not competent and does not have any technical know-how of the game.
“I know that the coach (Smirnov) has never been able to answer my questions. He doesn’t have the technical know-how. It’s not just me, even Jitu (Rai) said that to me,” Heena told this agency in an interaction here.
“It was not just me and Jitu, most of the shooters find him technically weak. I don’t want to train under somebody like him. I did work with him for few a days because my federation asked me, saying ‘just give him a chance and see if it works for you’. But it was sort of miserable, I don’t want to work with him. I don’t find him competent enough,” the 27-year-old shooter added.
Heena incidentally works with her coach and husband Raunak Pandit. She and Jitu had clinched gold for India in the mixed team 10m Air Pistol (demo) event at the Shooting World Cup in Gabala recently.
The win augured well for Heena and Jitu as this was their second World Cup gold together, having won the event in New Delhi earlier this year. She termed the second gold ‘special’
“This is sort of like, we were defending that first gold (bagged in New Delhi). In Delhi, we had a good start, but over in Gabala, we had to fight all the way. This was a much better performance than the one in Delhi,” she pointed out.
