Top marksmen for TopGun series

Uncorking the champagne bottle on the podium, live commentary and a shooting demo will be some of the draw cards to promote the sport at the inaugural TopGun Shooting series to be held in Delhi on July 2.

The O P Jindal Memorial Topgun shooting series will begin with a competition in double trap and the organisers Indianshooting.com plan to come up with similiar competitions in other events every 3-4 months.

The event, which will also be telecast on Ten Sports, will pit some raw talent in the country against international shooters, including Athens Olympics silver medallist Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore.

"This is an experiment to make the sport more popular, and so during the final after 10 doubles there will be a break during which time the compere will analyse the chances of all the finalists," Rathore said on Tuesday.

"It is time now for shooting to grab more visibility and I have no doubt that shooters will produce India's best performance in the 2008 Beijing Games," he said.

Naveen Jindal, Lok Sabha MP and managing director of Jindal Steel and Power Ltd which will sponsor the event, said in order to attract more sponsors the government should offer special incentives to companies backing Olympic sports.

"Companies are not interested because there is not enough media coverage for sports other than cricket. To prepare we have to put in a lot of Vitamin M (money) and so government should offer incentives like tax exemptions," he said.

Jindal also asked the government to ease the restrictions faced by national level shooters for the import of arms and ammunition.