She trained at Patiala under coach Amrinder Singh Cheema, since Panchkula had no shotgun range of its own, and she was never afraid of the weapon, even as it left its mark on her. “Her right cheek still has many black marks due to the placement of the shotgun, but she would not worry,” her father says.

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India’s Raiza Dhillon, Maheshwari Chauhan and Parinaaz Dhaliwal pose with the team bronze medal on the podium. (NRAI)

Parinaaz Dhaliwal’s fascination began the same way, at her family’s village of Thikriwala near Barnala, where her great grandfather Gurkirat Pal Singh Dhaliwal kept shotguns of his own, and where she grew up hearing the elders’ hunting stories from before 1971. She started with an air rifle at Mayo College in Ajmer at 14, moved to the shotgun two years later, and broke into the junior and then senior national teams soon after. Her father, Rattandeep Dhaliwal, remembers what the sport cost her hands before it gave her anything back. “There were days in summers when her hands would suffer blisters with the friction of the firearm. But she would never be deterred,” he says.

Maheshwari Chauhan started at 12, watching her grandfather Dhanpat Singh’s guns at their village of Siana in Rajasthan. She too began on an air rifle at Mayo College before asking to switch to the shotgun, and she was small enough at the time that her equipment had to be built around her rather than the other way round. “Her height was short at that time and we had to do stock modifications on her gun, and later when she was selected in junior national teams, coaches worked on her strength,” says her father, Pradeep Singh.

HISTORIC FIRST ON THE SKEET RANGE! 🎯

Raiza Dhillon, Maheshwari Chauhan and Parinaaz Dhaliwal script history at Aichi-Nagoya 2026, winning India’s maiden Asian Games medal in the Women’s Skeet Team event! 🥉

— Sony Sports Network (@SonySportsNetwk) September 23, 2026

On Tuesday, the three of them combined for a score of 331, behind only China’s 357 and Kazakhstan’s 336, for team bronze. Dhillon finished eighth individually, Dhaliwal ninth, Chauhan twelfth, and none of them made the individual final. It was, on paper, a day of near-misses. The women’s skeet mixed team event has existed at the Asian Games only since 1990, and has mostly belonged to China, Korea, Kazakhstan and North Korea since. India had never stood on that podium before.

Anantjeet Singh Naruka, the Hangzhou silver medallist and Paris Olympic mixed team fourth-place finisher, and Raiza Dhillon herself missed individual medals with fourth-place finishes in the men’s and women’s skeet finals. The Indian men’s team of Naruka, Mairaj Ahmed Khan and Bhavtegh Singh Gill had already won bronze earlier in the day.

Raiza Dhillon and Maheshwari Chauhan

Foreign coach Riccardo Filippelli had expected more than a near-miss from his two individual finalists, and said so plainly. “This is certainly a historic medal that I’m very proud of. Two shooters in the final is a great thing, but honestly, knowing my two girls, I would have expected a medal. Ultimately, their level has definitely improved, and I expect better performances in the future. I would also like to applaud Maheshwari, because after a disastrous first round, she didn’t give up and helped us win a bronze medal. It was a strong field here and the team medal will push the girls to better it in future.”

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Dhillon’s father already knows what happens next, because it happens every time. “Like always, she will send us a picture of her medal and the gun over her shoulders,” he says. Dhaliwal will do her own version of it, back home. “When she returns, she will place this medal in the cabinet with all the heirloom guns of the family,” her father says. Three families, three cabinets, and now, for the first time, a medal that didn’t exist for India before Tuesday to put in them.