‘I don’t think perfection exists’: Asiad medallist Kynan's unfinished Olympic pursuit

“Goosebumps!”That is the first word Kynan Chenai uses when asked what comes to mind when he thinks back to the Asian Games mixed-team trap final. He and Neeru Dhanda had won gold for India, but Chenai says there was little room to think about the medal while he was shooting.His attention was on the target, the gun mount, and the moment he needed to press the trigger. “At that point, nothing else mattered.

It didn't matter if someone missed a target or if someone else broke theirs. All that mattered was hitting my target.” The emotion came later. “So, sitting here with you and thinking about it now, the one word that comes to mind is goosebumps.”Chenai had finished 16th in qualification in the individual event. In the mixed team, held a day later, he combined with Neeru Dhanda to qualify for the final and then shot 19 of 20 in the final.

The change in performance was not lost on him.“At the Asian Games, I'm glad my experience and ability allowed me to flip the switch between the individual competition and the mixed-team event,” he says. “I was able to back myself and get that energy back after the individual event, which had taken place just a day earlier.”“I'm glad I was able to flip that switch. However, it comes down to my experience and my ability to grit my teeth and grind through difficult situations.”The final also required Chenai to work alongside Dhanda, who had come off a demanding Asian Games campaign and was exhausted after shooting in the rain.

He says the two had their own routines and that he trusted her to know what she was doing.He told her he would help if she needed anything; otherwise, they would focus on their targets and assess the result afterwards. Dhanda told him at one point, “My battery is down.” Chenai's reply was characteristically brief: “Then go and recharge it!” He laughs about their banter and says he was impressed by how she found the energy to keep going.“Eventually, I was very impressed by how she managed to gather some energy and hold everything together to a certain extent.

I'm glad I was able to do the same, and it worked out very well for the country.”The 38-year-old barrel behind the goldThere was another detail behind the performance: the barrel on his gun belonged to his father, Darius Chenai, former national trap champion, who introduced Kynan to the sport when he was 10. The barrel was 38 years old.Chenai had been using a high-rib barrel for four or five years but was not getting the consistency he wanted.

The decision to change it came after discussions with his team. His Perazzi gun allows different components to be fitted to the same action, so he could use another barrel without changing the entire gun. He did not have a regular barrel at home; his father's gun was the only one with one available.“I asked him, and he said, ‘Yeah, take it, use it.’ He wasn't using it at the time.”The older barrel worked well enough to be part of an Asian Games gold-medal performance.His father has since been teasing him about how many shells he is putting through it and warning him to be careful with something already so old.

“But at the end of the day, it's all fun and jokes with him. He's quite proud that I've been able to use something of his and achieve some success with it.”The first person who taught him to shootDarius was also the person who first took Chenai to the range and put a gun in his hands. A two-time national champion in trap shooting, he taught his son the basics of shooting and, just as importantly, how to handle a firearm safely.Chenai says his father explained that a gun had to be respected, cleaned and put away properly.

Some of the techniques he learnt then remain part of his shooting today.“I've had many different role models throughout my career. I could give you a list of names, but Dad is one of them. He's the first one, the OG.”He also names Manjir Singh, Manojit Singh Sandhu and Ranjan Sodhi as influences. More recently, David Kostelecki, his coach and a two-time Olympic medallist, has become an important source of advice.

“I've been trying to learn from him how to win an Olympic medal. I keep picking his brain.”Chenai grew up in Hyderabad and spent 10 years at Hebron School in Ooty. He describes himself as a child more interested in sport than studies, keen to be involved in whatever was happening around him.Prithviraj Tondaiman, an accomplished Indian trap shooter who competed at the Paris 2024 Olympics and was part of India's gold-medal-winning men's trap team at the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou, was a young shooter at the range when Chenai was growing up.

Tondaiman has often told him that he wanted to do everything: put the microphone on the range, load clay targets into the machine, check that it worked, shoot and then pick up the empty cartridges.“I was one of those kids who wanted to be involved in everything,” Chenai says. “I was into hockey, swimming, shooting and football. I loved everything.” Eventually, he had to settle on one sport.

“But eventually, as life goes on, you realise that you don't have enough time to do everything. You have to pick one thing, and I'm glad I picked this one.”Rio, the missed Olympics and the road to LAThe Olympics became the main target in his twenties. Chenai was 25 when he made his debut at Rio 2016, but he now looks back at that version of himself as a shooter who wanted to reach the Games without fully understanding what it took to win a medal there.“In my twenties, the one goal was to go to the Olympics.

That was the main thing I wanted to achieve. However, I didn't know how to win an Olympic medal. I was a kid running on fumes. I was just shooting my way through whatever I could, relying on sheer grit and, as they say, sheer dumb luck.”Rio gave him the experience of competing at the Olympics and, in his words, a clearer sense of what he needed to do differently next time. Chenai finished 19th in the men's trap qualification with a score of 114.

“That was a great experience for me bec…