With first National Games gold and near ‘world record’, Narmada Nithin living the dream
With first National Games gold and near ‘world record’, Narmada Nithin living the dream
A collective groan made its way across the shooting hall at the Maharana Pratap Sports College when R. Narmada Nithin took her final shot of the women’s 10m air rifle competition at the National Games. A score of 10.7, on any other day, wouldn’t have elicited such a reaction.
A 10.7 would be one of the higher-scoring shots in air rifle on most occasions (maximum being a 10.9), but Narmada’s effort on Thursday was just not high enough. She had shot nearly flawlessly in the final—beating highly-rated opponents including Olympic seventh-place finisher Ramita Jindal and two-time Olympian Elavenil Valarivan—finishing with a score of 255.4, just 0.1 short of the world record.
In the qualification round yesterday, Narmada got to a nearly-as-impressive 634 – that would have had her qualify with ease to the final of the Paris Olympics.
In a way, the 10.7 didn’t matter. Domestic scores are, of course, not considered for world marks. But Narmada says she would have liked to better the mark. “I wasn’t looking at the scores before I took that final shot. It would have felt good to go past the old record. It’s not every day you shoot a score as high as that,” she says.
But while it wouldn’t have counted as a world mark, even coming as close as she did means the world to Narmada who won her first National Games gold in three appearances at the competition (she failed to qualify for the finals in 2022 in Gujarat and finished seventh in 2023 in Goa). It was yet another reminder that even a relatively late start and a lack of support cannot stand in the way of talent and the gumption to pursue dreams.
As long as she can remember, the 22-year-old from Chennai says she was fascinated with shooting. “I think I was obsessed with shooting from the time I went to Marina beach and played that game where you shoot balloons with an air gun,” she says.
Shooting though wasn’t what her family had planned out for her. “My father was bitterly against it. In some ways, it didn’t make sense. He was the sports-in-charge at IIT Madras. He looked after all the sports the students played – kabaddi, swimming, volleyball, et cetera. But despite being a sports professor, he didn’t want me to have anything to do with sports. My mom was an engineer. And I already had an elder brother who was really smart. He studied at NIT Trichy and then completed his PhD from IIT Guwahati. His name is Nithin Narmada and in many ways, he’s completely opposite to me! He is like a really smart guy and I always felt I was never as smart as him. I did well in my boards also but what I always wanted to do was play sports,” she says.
It wasn’t encouraged. “I’d try out for athletics as a child but I was never encouraged. I was good enough to compete in district competitions in the 100 and 200m but I always travelled by myself. No one would come with me,” she says.
Narmada’s dad, she says, wanted her to become an English professor and she studied for her degree in English Literature while still hoping one day to find her way into the shooting range. That happened almost serendipitously.
While he wanted her to have nothing to do with shooting, Narmada’s father himself had a connection to the sport. “My father was very close friends with Elavenil Valarivan’s father. They know each other right from their bachelor days. Although Elavenil had mostly been raised in Gujarat, in 2018, she moved to the Gun for Glory Academy in Chennai. One day in 2018, Elavenil’s father invited my father and me to come to her training range,” she says.
There Elavenil’s father managed to convince Narmada’s parent to let her try shooting if only for a bit. And that was all Narmada needed.
At 16, Narmada was already a late starter. Elavenil, by then, was already competing internationally.
Narmada signed up for a foundation course where she was taught the basics such as the difference between a pistol and rifle. It didn’t take her long to pick things up.
Within a year, she was competing at the State Championships. “When I started shooting, I finally realised I had a goal. I finally felt I had found what I wanted to do. I enjoyed what I was doing. The feeling I got when I first loaded the gun with a pellet and fired a shot was like the greatest in the world. I knew right then that this was what I wanted to do again and again. I wasn’t getting this feeling from anywhere else. No matter what I studied, I wasn’t getting that feeling. I don’t think I could ever be world-class in academics but I can certainly be world-class as a sportsperson,” she says.
Even as she progressed, her father remained adamant that she wasn’t to go further. “He just wanted me to study. Even though he knew Elavenil, he reasoned that she achieved so much because she had the benefit of training for so many years. I, on the other hand, was a late starter to the sport. I’d never get as good. I was wasting my time,” she says.
Narmada never managed to change her father’s mind. “My parents later separated and I ended up living with my mother. I don’t talk much with my father now,” she says.
She did find the support she craved from her mother Vetrichelvi. “She’s always been my backbone. She still is. She supports me no matter what anyone in my family says,” she says.
Support has been more than verbal. In 2019, after a year of competing with borrowed equipment from the academy and Elavenil, Narmada was gifted her very own kit by her mother. “It wasn’t easy. These are expensive equipment costing several lakh. My mother took a loan to pay for both of them,” Narmada says.
Narmada is still using the same Walther gun. “It’s been lucky for me. I’ll use it as long as I can,” she says. The gun has been by her side through all sorts of times.
There were good times such as when she won her first junior national title in 2019, then bad when she lost a year of training and fitness after being infected twice by COVID. Using the same gun she made her comeback and made her national team debut at the 2023 Cairo World Cup where she won gold with a world record in the mixed team event with Rudrankksh Patil.
That breakout performance was followed by a dry spell that left her wondering whether she was actually meant to be a high-level shooter. It’s a phase she went through at a time when she was confused about the reason she was shooting.
“At that time, I felt that it was my mother and I against the world. I felt she had sacrificed so much for me. I had to shoot well so I could make it up to her. It was the wrong way of thinking. I realised I couldn’t treat shooting like that – like a job. I had to shoot because I loved it and that was actually how I felt,” she says.
It was in that state of mind that Narmada failed to make the cut for the Indian 10m air rifle team for the Olympic Games during the selection trials. However, she’s made her peace with what happened. “I don’t think I was ready for it back then. I think I am in a much better place now,” she says.
This is vouched for by her coaches. “The thing that stands out for Narmada now is that she has this ability to stay calm. She shoots big scores because she has this ability to stay focussed for very long periods,” says Neha Chavan, who now coaches not just Narmada but also Elavenil and Ramita Jindal at the Gun for Glory academy in Chennai.
It’s that ability to stay calm under stress that stood out even on Thursday. Just before Narmada’s final shot, the announcer’s microphone unexpectedly let out a jarring static through the speaker. To shoot as well as she did with that disturbance was impressive.
While she didn’t get a score better than the world record, Narmada is grateful to get her first national gold. But she isn’t done just yet. “I think I have to accomplish something really big in shooting. It isn’t just about scores and tournaments like the Olympics. I want to do something that matters in this field as long as I am here,” she says.
The big competitions and scores will eventually follow. For now, she is grateful simply to be in the position she is in. “It’s funny to be talking about breaking the world record. It’s almost like a dream to even be having this conversation. It’s a dream which seemed impossible once. There is a little girl inside me who dreamed of all of this. I think even she would have doubted if told that one day she would be standing on the podium with a gold medal around her neck with a score almost equal to a world record. But it is true,” she says.
