pune after facing uncertainties for almost seven months 29 olympic core group shooters have finally begun extensive training at the karni singh shooting ranges in delhithe national camp that had been postponed twice earlier finally began from october 21 and the shooters are heaving a sigh of reliefthe environment of the camp makes a lot of difference i had started training at home in august but despite training all day there was a lack of satisfaction and assurance as we were on our own at camp there is always an assurance that if we go wrong there is someone to correct it tokyo quota holder in mens 10m pistol abhishek verma saidalso a national camp means to convey that things have started happening officially so the hopes of competing at the olympics have reignited verma saidthe asian games bronze and world cup gold medallist shooter said given the covid19 situation there were some apprehensions before joining the campmy parents were hesitating in sending me to the camp and asked me to train at home as it would have been safer i didnt have any fear other than the testing procedure i had heard the swab test hurt a lot but fortunately my experience was not bad at all abhishek 31 saidformer commonwealth games gold medallist and national pistol coach samaresh jung said things are getting back on track for indian shooterswe dont consider training scores as parameters for progress but there are many other things like rhythm consistency which is getting back to the precovid level jung saidwhen asked whether shooters utilized the time well at home jung said i dont have a common reply for all shooters but there are some who didnt waste time and continued training during these seven months for instance saurabh chaudhary is as good now as he was before the covid19 situation this means he had not changed his routine even at homejung feels the long break has come as a blessing in disguise for shooters there was a lot of travelling and match pressure for the shooters and i feel the break has been good for them they are fresh now and can start from where they had stopped he saidhowever lack of competitions will remain a problem to solvethe training is fine but shooters need competition to test their progress with the current situation prevailing there is nothing scheduled immediately we conduct mock matches during training but it cannot match the pressure of a real tournament the coach addedthere was a tournament in slovenia in january but it has been cancelled i guess we will now directly play in the delhi world cup in march next year verma added covid positive shooter not from olympic core groupa shooter training at the kssr was found covid positive on sunday however nrai secretary rajiv bhatia said the athlete was not part of the olympic core group once the olympicbound shooters leave the range shooters under khelo india programme train at the range the positive