India picked up seven medals in a day, three of them gold, to surge on top of the standings at the ISSF Junior World Cup in Suhl, Germany.
After Rudrankksh Patil and Abhinav Shaw set the ball rolling early on Wednesday morning with a gold and silver medal finish in the men’s 10m air rifle, Ramita won silver in the junior women’s air rifle event, before the pistol shooters dominated in the evening session.
Just as it was in the air rifle event, it was an all-Indian gold medal match in the men’s 10m air pistol as Shiva Narwal beat Sarabjot Singh 16-12 in the final. The duo had never really looked challenged throughout the day, finishing first and third respectively in qualification and again took the top two spots in the final eight stage to set up a title clash.
Then it was the turn of Palak and Manu Bhaker to dominate the junior women’s pistol event. Palak topped the qualification round while Manu clinched the eighth qualifying place with a score of 565 on higher inner 10s. She then topped the top eight stage with a score of 250.6 to Palak’s second place score of 248.1.
However, it was to be Palak’s day. Competing in her first ISSF final, she came up with a 17-9 win over the Tokyo Olympian.
France won the only other gold of the day as reigning junior world champion Oceanne Mueller won the junior women’s 10m air rifle event while hosts Germany, Moldova, Poland and Uzbekistan were the other medal winners on the day.
There are a total of eight more medal days on the schedule and coming up are four more finals on Thursday, all with Indian interests, namely in the mixed air events and the trap shooting competitions.