ਰਾਇਜ਼ਾ ਢਿੱਲੋਂਰਾਇਜ਼ਾ ਢਿੱਲੋਂ

Raiza Dhillon (born 20 April 2004) is an Indian skeet shooter from Shamgarh village in Haryana's Karnal district. She became the first Indian woman to win an Olympic quota place in women's skeet, earning it with a silver medal at the Asian Shotgun Championships in Kuwait in January 2024, and went on to compete at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

ਮੁੱਢਲਾ ਜੀਵਨ

Raiza Dhillon is from Shamgarh, a village in Karnal district, Haryana. Her father, Ravijit Singh Dhillon, is a farmer, and her mother, Gul Dhillon, is the sarpanch of Shamgarh. Her grandfather was chairman of the Zila Parishad in Shamgarh. The family later shifted its base to Panchkula, and Raiza is now based in Chandigarh.

Guns were part of everyday life in the Dhillon home long before Raiza ever competed. Her great-grandfather, Jagirdar Gurinder Singh Dhillon, owned about twenty guns, and her father owned six shotguns. As a child, Raiza grew up seeing pictures of those guns and wanted to hold a real one when she grew up. Her mother introduced her to tennis, swimming and Bharatanatyam, but none of those held her interest for long.

At twelve, at her father's suggestion, Raiza tried shooting. Her father had watched her try sport after sport without settling on any of them, and he thought the family familiarity with guns might finally catch her attention. It did. She began with a 10m air rifle and attended coaching camps at the Gagan Narang Shooting Academy in Pune before settling with coach Amrinder Singh Cheema, a friend of her father and a four-time national medallist.

From air rifle to skeet

Raiza shot air rifle for about four years. The rifle gave her a foundation in stance, breathing and focus, and her parents and coach had already decided that shotgun would be the longer-term direction once she was old enough to handle the heavier gun. At sixteen she made the switch, and in 2019 she began shooting skeet seriously. She tried both skeet and trap first, then chose skeet because it felt natural to her.

Skeet is a shotgun discipline in which clay targets are launched from two houses, one high and one low, on either side of the shooter. The targets cross in front of the shooter at speed, so the event rewards fast reactions, smooth gun movement and total concentration. Raiza's early progress was quick, and within a few years of picking up a shotgun she was representing India at junior level.

In 2023 she joined the Sports Authority of India's National Centre of Excellence. She also trained in the National Rifle Association of India camps, which she credits with giving Indian shooters access to ammunition, clay targets, coaches and support staff. In the six to seven months before the Paris Olympics she worked with Italian coach Ennio Falco, an Olympic gold medallist, training with the Indian shotgun team in Italy.

Junior medals

Raiza's international career began at the Junior World Championships in Lima in 2021, where she won gold with the Indian women's skeet team. A year later, at the Junior World Championships in Osijek, Croatia, she was part of the Indian team that won gold again. Her first big individual medal came at the Junior World Championships in Changwon, South Korea, in 2023, where she won silver in the individual skeet event.

That silver in Changwon made her only the second Indian woman skeet shooter to win a World Championship medal, after Ganemat Sekhon in 2021. She also won gold in the junior mixed team and silver in the junior individual event at the Asian Championships in Changwon in 2023, and competed at the Junior World Cup in Suhl, Germany, the same year.

In March 2023 she stepped up to senior competition at the World Cup in Larnaca, Cyprus, shooting in the women's individual and mixed team skeet events. The step up was a test of whether her junior results would survive against senior fields. Within ten months, she had her answer.

How did Raiza Dhillon qualify for the Paris Olympics?

Raiza won India's first women's skeet Olympic quota at the Asian Shotgun Championships in Kuwait City on 20 January 2024. The event was an Olympic qualifier, with quota places for the leading eligible shooters. The qualification round told one story and the final told another. Ganemat Sekhon, the senior Indian shooter, finished second in qualification with 117 out of 125. Raiza shot 115 and took sixth place only after a shoot-off, while Maheshwari Chauhan also shot 115 and took third place.

In the six-woman final, China's Gao Jinmei won gold with 56 hits out of 60. Raiza took silver with 52, Maheshwari Chauhan took bronze with 43 out of 50, and Ganemat Sekhon finished fourth with 30 out of 40. Raiza's silver earned the quota place, making her the first Indian woman to win an Olympic quota in women's skeet. India also won gold in the women's skeet team event, with the three Indians combining for 347, and Raiza added a bronze in the mixed team event with Gurjoat Khangura.

A quota place belongs to the country, not to the shooter who wins it, so Raiza still had to earn her place in the Indian team through the National Rifle Association of India's selection trials. She did, and she and Maheshwari Chauhan were picked for Paris. On the same day in Kuwait, Anantjeet Singh Naruka won silver in the men's skeet and secured the men's quota, taking India's shooting quota tally to 19.

Paris 2024 and the season after

At Paris 2024, Raiza was the youngest Indian shooter at the Games, aged twenty. She and Maheshwari Chauhan became the first Indian women to compete in Olympic skeet. Raiza scored 113 out of 125 in qualification and finished 23rd, missing the final. Maheshwari finished 14th with 118. Raiza later said the stress of competing at the Olympics at such a young age was difficult to cope with, but also a learning lesson that made her a stronger person.

She answered the disappointment with record scores at home. In December 2024, at the National Shooting Championships, she shot 122 in qualification, setting a junior national record and beating Simranpreet Kaur Johal's junior record of 120 from 2018. The score also equalled the senior national record of 122 set by Ganemat Sekhon. In February 2025 she shot 124 out of 125 at the All India Inter-University Championships, equalling Sekhon's national record of 124.

In April 2025 she reached her first senior ISSF World Cup final and finished fifth in Lima. A month later she won her first individual ISSF World Cup medal, a silver in women's skeet at the Junior World Cup in Suhl, Germany, shooting 51 out of 60 in the final behind Phoebe Bodley-Scott of Great Britain, who shot 53. She added another Junior World Cup silver in New Delhi in 2025 and a team bronze at the Asian Championships in Shymkent the same year.

Asian Games bronze and what comes next

In August 2026 Raiza was picked for her first Asian Games, in the women's senior skeet event at Aichi-Nagoya. A month later she won her first Asian Games medal, a team bronze with Maheshwari Chauhan and Parinaaz Dhaliwal. The trio combined for 331 points, with Raiza and Parinaaz scoring 111 each and Maheshwari adding 109. China took gold with 346 and Kazakhstan took silver.

Raiza's Punjab connection is her family, not her home state. She is from Haryana, and her home village, Shamgarh, is in Karnal district. The Dhillons are a Punjabi family, and her story sits in the Kosh beside other Punjabi shooters, above all Ganemat Sekhon, whose national records Raiza has spent the last two seasons chasing and matching. The two women, one from Chandigarh and one from Shamgarh, have pushed Indian women's skeet further than it had ever gone.

At twenty-two, Raiza is still at the start of her senior career. An Olympic debut, a national record and an Asian Games medal are already behind her, and the Los Angeles 2028 cycle is the next horizon. If her progress since Kuwait holds, the quota she won as a teenager will be remembered as the beginning of her career, not its peak.