The 10th Asian Airgun Championship was a fruitful outing for India with a rich haul of individual and team medals across categories. Held at the Asaka Shooting Range in Wako City, Japan, the venue for the 2020 Olympics, India returned home with 21 medals including six gold, eight silver and seven bronze.
More importantly, four junior shooters – Tushar Mane, Mehuli Ghosh, Saurabh Chaudhary and Manu Bhaker – also claimed quota places for the 2018 Youth Olympics Games which will be held in Buenos Aires next October.
Chaudhary won both the individual as well as the team golds in the men’s 10m air pistol youth event, while Bhaker clinched a silver in the women’s 10m air pistol youth. Ghosh struck gold to bag one out of quota places up for grabs in women’s 10m air rifle youth, while Mane took home the bronze.
Here’s a recap of India’s performance at the 10th Asian Championship 10m Rifle/Pistol.
Opening day heroics
India began the championship on a strong note, collecting five medals with seven individual finalists across the three events on the event’s opening day. Ravi Kumar won an individual bronze in the men’s 10m air rifle while Arjun Babuta won individual silver in the junior men’s 10m air rifle. India also bagged three team silver medals in each of the three air rifle events.
Deepak Kumar led the Indian charge into the finals of the men’s 10m air rifle, shooting 627.5 after the regulation 60 shots, to qualify fourth out of eight finalists. Ravi Kumar, with 624.6 finished sixth, while former Olympic-Bronze medalist Gagan Narang, making a return into the event after a break, shot 624.5 to qualify in seventh place.
Babuta, an ISSF junior world cup bronze-medallist last year, shot consistently to win a silver behind Chinese Yukun Liu, a reigning junior world champion and a winner of two ISSF World Cup stage medals this year in the senior category. The Indian finished just 0.1 points behind Liu in the final.
The other Indian in the final Tejas Krishna Prasad was eliminated in seventh position. However, the duo combined with Sunmoon Singh Brar to bag the Team Silver medal with a combined score of 1867.5.
In the women’s 10m air rifle, Anjum Moudgil and Meghana Sajjanar made it to the finals, shooting scores of 417.5 and 415.9 to qualify in second and fourth positions respectively. Pooja Ghatkar, the third Indian in the fray, shot 413.6 to finish 11th. Moudgil thereafter missed a medal by a whisker, getting beaten in a shoot-off to determine third place, to Singapore’s Tan Qian Xiu Adele. However, the trio won the team silver, logging a combined total of 1247 to finish behind China.
First YOG berths
Apart from Ghosh and Mane booking two quota places at YOG, India won a total of three gold and three bronze to add to their five medals on the first day.
Mane was the first Indian to book a Youth Olympic Games 2018 quota place with a bronze in men’s 10m air rifle youth event with a score of 228.2. He also combined with Hriday Hazarika and Mohit Agnihotri teamed up to win the team gold in the event with a combined score of 1863.1.
India’s second Youth Olympic Games quota was won by Ghosh when she not only topped her qualifying round with a score of 420.6, but also led from the start in the final, and except for a brief while in the initial stages, kept shooting consistently to stay ahead of the pack till the very end. She shot 250.5 in the final to edge out Mingwei Gao of China by 0.1 point.
Ghosh then combined with Rakshna Chakkaravarthy and Sreya Agrawal to clinch the team bronze with a total of 1240.5.
Samiksha Dhingra also claimed the gold medal in junior women’s 10m air rifle outgunning her Chinese rival. She shot a score of 249.6 at the end of the allotted 24- shots to pip silver winner Yu Zhang by 0.1 point. Dhingra and Agrawal also teamed up with Manini Kaushik to win the team bronze with a combined score of 1238.1.
Heena Sidhu, Jitu Rai shine
Heena Sidhu, Jitu Rai and Anmol Jain clinched individual medals in addition to three team medals of all colours on the third day.
India got the gold in men’s 10m air pistol team event with Rai, Shahzar Rizvi and Omkar Singh firing on target. The women’s team of Sidhu, Shri Nivetha Paramantham and Harveen Srao and the junior men’s team comprising of Jain, Gaurav Rana and Abhishek Arya took home two silver medals. Veterans Sidhu, Rai and youngster Jain won the bronze in the women’s, men’s and junior 10 air pistol event respectively.
Two Indians reached the final of the men’s 10m air pistol with Rizvi who topped qualification with a score of 583. However, in the 24-shot men’s final, Rai narrowly pipped Rizvi to get the bronze with a score of 219.6. While Omkar Singh missed out on the final, his 575 points were enough to secure the team gold with a combined score of 1735.
In the women’s 10m air pistol, Sidhu was the only Indian to make the final. She began the final on strong note, but a 7.8 in the 11th shot meant she had to be satisfied with a bronze with a final score of 217.2.
Three Indians reached the junior men’s 10m air pistol final, with Jain topping qualification with 577points out of 600, while Rana was fourth with 569 and Arya eighth with 557, which ensured the team silver with a total of 1703 points.
Four more medals on the final day
India added four medals to their tally on the final day of the competition.
Two Indians reached the finals of the men’s 10m air pistol youth event. Cheema topped qualifying with a score of 577, while Chaudhary shot 573 to qualify in third place. Surinder Singh, the third Indian in the field, shot 561 to finish 10th. The trio won the team gold with a combined effort of 1711, 11 points clear of the silver winning Korean team and 19 ahead of China, who won bronze.
Chaudhary then came up with a start to finish effort in the final, finishing with a score of 243.1 to win gold and seal the first of the three available quotas for the Youth Olympic Games in the process. Cheema managed sixth place with 156.8.
In the women’s 10m air pistol youth, Bhaker topped qualifying with a score of 382 and was the only Indian to reach the final.
Bhaker had a rough start in the final lying eighth after 10 shots, but recovered spectacularly to win a silver, missing the gold by a margin of only 0.1.
Two Indians – junior world champion Yashaswini Singh Deswal and Mahima Agrawal – made it to the final of junior women’s 10m air pistol, finishing third and fourth in qualifying respectively.
Both shot a score of 378, while Yogita shot 372 to finish in 11th place. Their combined score of 1128 helped them claim a team silver. In the final, Deswal shot 195.7 to finish fourth while Agarwal ended sixth on a score of 155.4.
With inputs from PTI
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