pune at 39 tejaswini sawant is finally close to realising her longcherished dream of becoming an olympianshould it happen of which there can be little doubt none would deserve it more than the former world championon saturday the kolhapur shooter clinched a quota for the 2020 tokyo games by finishing fourth in womens 50m 3 position rifle as five of the eight finalists had already qualified for tokyo tejaswinis entry to eightwoman final was enough to grab one of the three quota places on offertejaswini shot 1171 out of 1200 in the qualification but missed the medal after a fourthplace finish 4358after a series of heartbreaks dip in form and family commitments tejaswinis a decade and a half quest to qualify for the games finally ended on saturday she had won gold in 50m rifle prone event at the world championships in 2010 since womens prone was never an olympic event she has remained a world champion without the olympians tagi feel my struggle to qualify for olympics has finally come to an end an elated tejaswini told toithe shooter had missed out on qualifying for the beijing edition four timesthe pattern continued ahead of the 2012 olympics while she was out of touch with the sport ahead of the 2016 games this year tejaswini participated only in one quota event finished 47th in rio de janeiro world cup before the asian championshipsin the 2008 qualifiers i had missed three quotas even after getting my scores tied then the tie was broken by count back the shooter with a better score in the previous shot gaining the advantage once i missed it by one point it was the same before 2012 it wasnt as close as 2008 though tejaswini saidafter 2013 tejaswini sort of lost touch with shooting due to her mothers health issues she began training again in 2016 and came back into the indian team in 2017the turning point for tejaswini came at the commonwealth games in gold coast australia last year where she won gold in 3p and silver in prone it was her only podium finish between the 2010 world championships and nowthe cwg medals made me realise that age is not a barrier at all i had such a great support from my family and my coach kuheli gangulee that i had to do well for them i wanted to win the quota for them she saidone thing that has kept tejaswini in good stead is her adherence to the routinei dont believe in doing anything fancy i follow my coachs plan and i do it without any break i have been training for only 23 hours a day but i have been consistently following this she saidfor her coach it is all about never giving up she has proved that she is mentally and physically fit to shoot at the world stage she has been shooting better since the format changed from 60 shots to 120 shots she could improve her performance because endurance