The world No. 1 tag has earned young shooter Shahzar Rizvi many ‘friends’. He has been flooded with friendship requests on Facebook after his coronation as the top gun in the 10m air pistol discipline. So much so the number of such requests has gone beyond the maximum limit of 5000 in both his accounts on social media.
The young shooter, however, isn’t flattered; rather, he’s irritated by the sudden attention and constant notifications. To escape it, he dumped the responsibility of handling his social media accounts on his brother, Sharib.
"Too much ho gya tha. So many requests! It was a needless bother, so I gave all passwords to my brother, he is handling it now. I’ve more or less decided to deactivate my accounts," Rizvi told The Tribune on Wednesday, a day after he was given the top spot in the ISSF rankings.
Back-to-back medals, a gold and a silver, from the ISSF World Cups in Guadalajara and Changwon propelled the Air Force sergeant to the top of the rankings. The two podium finishes gave the Meerut shooter 1654 rating points, putting him ahead of Russia’s Artem Chernousov (1046 points) and Japan’s Tomoyuki Matsuda (803) after the two ISSF World Cups this year.