JUST BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!!
They are famous and well known, I would present you with the list where the personalities have worked like heroes but never got any appreciation for that.
As the new generation of Indian shooters gunned down a record number of medals at the Glasgow Games, former shooter Roopa Unnikrishnan who battled the system and became the first Indian woman shooter to win a CWG gold medal - rifle prone at Kuala Lumpur Games in 1998 - is happy that her favourite sport is progressing in the right direction.
Roopa, who had won a silver in 50m rifle 3 position in Victoria in 1994 to improve on Soma Dutta's bronze in 1990, said recalling her heydays: "Playing a sport in India, especially if it was not cricket or maybe tennis, used to require a certain amount of philosophical resignation, at least when I was in the thick of things in the 90s and early 2000s."
The former shooter, who won the Rhodes scholarship and went to Oxford and now works as a consultant in USA, has not forgotten the harrowing experiences especially at the Anna University when she was told that shooting was not in their list. "What did the broader Indian system do? The visionary, if controversial, TN chief minister Jayalalitha did reward my CWG silver with a check for importing shooting equipment and a commitment to support my travel. On the other hand, as an FC who had "only" 96% in my exams, I was told by Anna University's interview board that shooting was not in their list of sports. This after I had already started winning medals for India. They sniggered at my certificates and medals. That year, they selected a district level rower and a tennis player. Where are they now, I wonder?" she said in an email interview to TOI.
Asked how she got hooked to the sport, Roopa, daughter of a former top cop, said: "My parents, Unnikrishnan and Jayasree, first introduced me to shooting when I was around 12. Having had the chance to try a shot while visiting a police range, I was hooked. Annie Oakley was certainly on my mind, as I pestered my father to take me to the shooting club in Chennai. My first true competition was at Madras Rifle Club, where I used an old Anschutz (rifle) lent by AR Krishnamurthy and soon I began to stack state juniors awards and women's trophies with the Kirkee fire Indian shots which had a 50 per cent chance of shooting high or low on a target." Roopa credits her success to the guidance of coach AJ Jalaludin. "The coaching instructions from my coach often had a layer of wisdom that spanned beyond the sport into life," she said.
The former shooter?, who won the Arjuna award in 1999, also says, with a tinge of sadness, that her achievements went mostly unrecognized. "I came back to India two days after the medal ceremony (in 1998), and some small part of my heart hoped that at last there would be some kind of recognition. I got off the plane, and there they were - the same people who had been there through thick and thin - my family, Jalal-uncle, a few friends and one person from the Madras Rifle Club at the airport. I suspect that was the last straw for me. In many ways, I had worked hard to keep playing the sport for my country while also keeping my education going. The scales tipped that day at Madras airport," she said.
"My letters to Tatas was rewarded with a letter from Ratan Tata and a check for Rs. 5,000. Another one to Indian Bank asking for support for my shooting netted Rs 50,000. That was it.