tokyo medical school manuals may not mention it but australias elena galiabovitch believes shooting has made her a better surgeon and not the other way roundthe minskborn 31yearold pistol shooter maintains a difficult worklife balance often hitting the shooting range straight after her shifts in a melbourne hospitalsurgery is very technical you need to learn a lot of operations a lot of skills a lot of fine motor skills and pistol shooting is no different said galiabovitch making her second olympic appearance in tokyoparticipating in a sport has helped my medicine a bit more than the other way aroundeven though the decisions you make in medicine are very different its about healthhere in sport youre in highpressure situations you need to think on your feet you need to adapt you need to calm yourself down there are a lot skills theregaliabovitch came 27th in 10metre air pistol in tokyo having finished 43rd in rio five years agowhile most of the athletes had their olympic preparation disrupted by the covid19 pandemic in galiabovitchs case the impact was quite differentwith medical resources diverted to fight the pandemic and elective surgeries halted she was pleasantly surprised to find extra practice hoursit was very strange she said i was so used to just going straight from work to the range to sleep early in the morning every day ive been at the range and i was like oh now i can train in the daytimedaughter of australias national pistol coach vladimir galiabovitch knew she would get attention from some of her parents after returning to her medical dutiessome patients in the past have seen me on tv the shooter who will compete in womens 25m pistol on thursday saidat the time of the commonwealth games in 2018 when i returned to work some of my patients were like oh i saw you on the television i was like yes yes you did