The Indian junior women’s pistol team comprising Manu Bhaker, Rhythm Sangwan and newly crowned world junior champion in the individual women’s pistol Naamya Kapoor, dominated proceedings in the 25m pistol team event at the ongoing International Shooting Sport Federation Junior World Championship in Lima, Peru, beating USA 16-4 in the gold medal match.
This was Bhaker’s fourth gold of the competition to go with one bronze, while it was the 14-year old Naamya’s second gold of the championship. For Sangwan too, this was a second gold medal, both coming in team events.
On Wednesday, eighth day of the championship, India also picked up a silver medal in the 25m rapid fire pistol event when Adarsh Singh fell short of USA’s Henry Turner Leverett in the six-man final.
In the women’s 25m pistol event, the Indian trio of Bhaker, Sangwan and Kapoor, faced little competition throughout.
On Tuesday, they had finished on top of round one qualification with a combined effort of 878, six points more of the second placed France. Later that day they topped round two as well to ease into the gold medal match with a score of 446. Team USA joined them in the final with a score of 437.
In the gold medal match on Wednesday, the Indian team took a commanding lead of 10-4 before the beginning of the eighth series of rapid-fire shots, before closing out at 16-4.
In the men’s 25m rapid fire, India had three finalists out of six with the twins Udhayveer and Vijayveer Sidhu making it through along with Adarsh Singh. Udhayveer was the best Indian in qualification with a score of 577 and finished fourth, while Adarsh was fifth with 574 and Vijayveer took the sixth and final qualification spot with 572.
The twins Udhayveer and Vijayveer were the first to go out in the final though, with Udhayveer getting nine hits in the first 20-shots to finish sixth. Vijayveer finished fifth, going out in the next series with 13 hits out of 25.
Adarsh however started the final strongly with a perfect 10 out of 10 in the first two series. However, USA’s Henry Turner Leverett turned out to be the most accurate in this match and finished with 32-hits out of 40 to win gold, with Adarsh finishing with 28 to win silver.
In the women’s trap team bronze medal match, India vs Germany, Divya Singh, Aadya Tripathi, Kirti Gupta started well but their opponents recovered to reach the required six series points with relative ease.
Earlier in the first medal event of the day, the 50m rifle prone mixed team, India finished outside the medals. The pair of Sift Kaur Samra and Surya Pratap Singh made it to the second qualification round, eventually finishing sixth with a combined score of 409.5. Ashi Chouksey and Sanskar Havelia finished ninth out 11 pairs in round one of qualification with a combined score of 604.0. The first eight pairs made it to round two.
India still sit on top of the medal tally, now with nine gold, eight silver and three bronze medals for a total of 20 medals. USA lie second with five gold and a total of 16 medals.
With all individual events now complete, there are a few more mixed and team events featuring Indians with the medal tally set to increase.
