Courtesy-The Indian Express
Monali Gorge was ecstatic to begin tutoring at her Nashik coaching institution, Excel Centre after SAI extended her National core group coaching contract last month. Shraddha Nalamwar, a fellow coach, recalls her friend’s delight to return to teach pistol shooters in a year when India was anticipated to bring home gold from the Tokyo Games.
However, COVID-19 attacked the 44-year-old, causing her to be hospitalized for a week. According to former international Ashok Pandit, she was shifted to the non-COVID ward after 15 days, but succumbed to mucormycosis, a fatal fungal illness. Her father, Manohar Gorhe, had also lost the battle against COVID-19 a few hours before, adding to the family’s misery. Monali’s mother and older sister survived.
Monali has been coaching a group of female pistol shooters since 2006, after training the first batch of pupils in Nashik in 1999, when shooting coach the late Dr. Bam arrived in the area following his retirement. She made the National team trials and shot for University, but it was in coaching that she found her true calling.
She would take on the administration and assist grow the sport in the city by methodically organizing the sport’s infrastructure and hosting competitions at the district level. She would serve as a judge and join the state association’s management committee after getting her ISSF coaching accreditation from Germany. “She performed an outstanding job in administration and was an excellent coach. We will miss her steady presence and love for the game,” said senior official Sheela Kanungo.
Monali Gorhe was also named Sri Lanka’s coach for the 2016 SAFF Games, where she led the men’s pistol squad to a bronze medal. She has previously taught national-level pistol shooters such as Shreya Gawande and Manisha Rathore in Nashik.
The National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) expressed its condolences for Monali and her father’s deaths, saying in a statement: “With great sorrow, we inform that Ms. Monali Gorhe, pistol coach of Core Group and an efficient technical official passed away today due to black fungus. It’s a tragedy that her father also died today. The shooting fraternity mourns the sad demise of a hard-working human being.”