New Delhi: Avani Lekhara is one of the more prominent faces in Indian Para sport but she owes a lot to her parents for it. When a car accident made her paralysed from waist down at the tender age of 11, they could have easily resigned her destiny to fate.
Instead, two years after the accident they insisted she take up to shooting despite being confined to a wheelchair that turned her life completely.
Thus the 22-year-old thanks her family at every given opportunity for giving a fresh lease of life when she was under trauma with a seemingly doomed future.
Initially she likened archery but then got attracted to shooting in 2015 and six years later made the headlines after winning India’s first gold medal at the Tokyo Paralympics in SH1 category in the 10m air rifle category and then picked up a bronze in the 50m rifle 3-positions event.
She set a Paralympic record and tied the world record mark with a score of 249.6 points while taking gold.
Born and raised in Jaipur, she studied at Kendriya Vidyalaya and inspired by Abhinav Bindra’s shooting gold at Beijing Olympics in 2008, she received encouragement when she won her first gold medal in regional competition.
It was followed by several national and international titles after which she came into national reckoning.
“Before the accident I was not into any sport and after that too I was not at all thinking about joining any sport. But my parents always thought that I need to do something other than studies. I went back to school two years after the accident. I went to KV No. 3 Jaipur.
“They have these regional games, national games, so my parents also thought of enrolling me in some sport, and then I went there during my summer vacations in 2015 and I tried archery, I tried shooting,” Avani recently told PTI.
“I liked shooting more because it was an indoor game, I thought ‘ok, let’s start’. Then I started competing, started liking it more…that’s how it went after that.”
Target podium
A former top-ranked shooter in the 10m air rifle (SH1) category, Avani is also employed as an assistant conservator of forest with the Rajasthan government.
She is aware that after achieving success at Tokyo, expectations are naturally higher at Paris, which has led her to concentrate more on execution, now that she is more matured and confident.
“I think we have been in a very positive environment throughout. We are just focussing on the process rather than the outcome. There, obviously, will be expectations but those expectations only motivate me and inspire me more to give my best. I’m also more mature in my technique,” she said.
“And whatever it is, even if it a negative or a positive motivation, I try to keep it outside the (firing) lane. When I go to the lane, I am only focusing and concentrating on my process rather than thinking about other things.”
Controlling her mind is a big task and Avani is keen to treat the Paralympics as just another tournament as it helps her to maintain focus.
For her a competition, be it the World Cup or the Paralympic Games, is just an extension of her training regimen, which has to be followed to the tee.
“I like to keep it (competitions) as similar to training as possible. If there is something which will happen in a match, I try it during training so that when I go into a competition I don’t feel any uncertainty. I just try to control the controllable.
“I try to keep my focus, my concentration… all the regimen that I follow, be it physical or mental training, all of it I try to keep it as similar as possible,” Avani said.
Shooter Avani Lekhara won India’s first gold medal at the Tokyo Paralympics in SH1 category in the 10m air rifle category. Other Sports Sports News: Latest Cricket News, Cricket Live Score, Sports Breaking News from Sports Today
