I cried like a baby in London, recalls Joydeep Karmakar

Rifle shooter Joydeep Karmakar has experienced the pain of narrowly missing out on an Olympic medal and ahead of the Summer Games in Rio, has penned down the hurdles created by coaches and officials in the run-up to the London Games.

In a book titled My Olympic Journey, Karmakar recalls how he felt after reaching the final of the men’s 50m rifle prone before finishing a painful fourth.

“In London, my friend Vijay Kumar was on the podium. He had shot a sensational final to win India’s second medal of the Games and the second silver medal for Indian shooting after Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore in 2004. Seeing Vijay on that podium, something inside me snapped. I started crying like a baby. At that moment, I realised what I had missed,” recalls Karmakar in a book co-authored by journalists Digvijay Singh Deo and Amit Bose.

Karmakar says that he initially just wanted to compete in the Olympics and it was only after seeing fellow shooters on the podium, he yearned for a medal.

He claims he had a tough time in the lead up to the Olympics, thanks to Indian team’s coaches Sunny Thomas and Stanislas Lapidus.

“Efforts were made to break me. I had to fight for my lawful place in the Indian shooting team for the 2012 Asian Championship in Doha, the last event before the selection committee for the Olympics met. I had not made the cut to represent the team in the actual competition in Doha, but had earned my right to shoot the minimum qualifying score (MQS), which is in accordance with shooting rules.

“For some reason, I wasn’t part of that either, and I really had to fight and make representations to the NRAI to ensure the policy was followed,” he writes.

“The trouble did not end there. When I reached Doha, the then national coach, Sunny Thomas, kicked me out of the team hotel, saying it was only for the national team and not for those shooting MQS. I was still an official MQS entry from India. Somehow, alternative arrangements were made...”