Ganemat and Darshna had to battle difficult conditions, including the wind, to finish on the podium. Assem Orynbay of Kazakhstan won gold following a shoot-off after she and Ganemat finished the 60-shot final with 50 hits each. But Ganemat missed the first of two shoot-off targets while Assem didn’t miss.

“It was windy here in Almaty and it was getting dark. That’s why I made a slow start in the final. The scoreboard here does not show the scores and I somehow got confused in the end and was overthinking a little bit. The silver medal in tough conditions here has come at the right time in my senior career and I am glad I am returning home with a medal and experience,” Ganemat said.

She is from a family of shooters — her great-grandfather Captain Chattar Singh won the Royal shooting competitions in the pre-independence era and her grandfather Mohinder Pal Singh shot at the national level. Ganemat would often accompany her father Amrinder Sekhon to the shooting range in Patiala from their then-Zirakpur residence. In 2018, Sekhon became the only Indian women skeet shooter to win a medal at the world level — a bronze in the Junior World Championship in Australia.

“I can’t remember when Ganemat’s love for guns started. She would be fascinated by the big bore guns of my father and grandfather at our home and once she turned 12, she herself told us to get her into big bore shooting. With skeet being a more technical event as compared to trap, she always liked to compete in skeet. We would go to the Patiala shooting range, which is more than 55 kilometres from our home, five times a week for her training sessions,” Amrinder said.

In 2018, Ganemat finished 50th in the senior world championships in Changwon before she finished 10th in Asian Games. She then trained under Italian coach Pietro Genga in the town of Bari, Italy, near the Adriatic Sea. The youngster won her first senior world medal, a bronze medal in the ISSF World Cup in Delhi in a field comprising 2016 Rio Olympics finalist Amber Hill of England.

It’s Raining Medals!

My heartfelt congratulations to Ganemat Sekhon & Darshna Rathore for claiming Silver 🥈 and Bronze 🥉medals respectively in Women’s Individual Skeet event at #ISSFWorldCup Shotgun Almaty 2023.

Your excellent performance will serve as an inspiration for… pic.twitter.com/bNaOJqgjZf

— Col Rajyavardhan Rathore (@Ra_THORe) May 23, 2023

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“There are two ranges at Bari and one thing which I have learnt training with the Italians is just to think about ‘aim and shoot’ in competition. That’s what coach Piero Genga has always told me. Training alongside Tokyo Olympics silver medallist, the Danish shooter Jesper Hansen, at Bari under Genga too helped my mindset. The range there is about 25 kms from the city and when the weather is good, we shoot close to 300-400 shots in a day,” Ganemat said.

On Tuesday, Ganemat shot a qualification score of 117 to be tied with two other shooters at the fourth spot before she shot eight in the shoot-off to qualify at the fourth spot for the six-shooter final. The likes of Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Diana Bacosi of Italy and Tokyo Olympics finalist Nadine Messerschmidt missed qualifying for the final.

“I have been training Ganemat since 2017, first as an Indian junior coach and our focus has been to make step-by-step progress. Competitions at the senior level are the key to success in skeet. While we improved on some technical things in her shooting, competitive events are where all those preparations come good,” her coach Genga said.