India’s Jitu Rai and Heena Sidhu clinched the gold medal in the 10-metre air pistol mixed-team event at the ISSF World Cup Final in Delhi on Tuesday. This was the first-ever mixed-team crystal globe awarded by the International Shooting Sport Federation and the first medal of this year’s World Cup Final.
Florian Foquet and Celine Goberville won the silver while China’s Xiaoxue Cai and Wei Yang took the bronze. Rai and Sidhu finished with 483.4 points, just ahead of Fouquet and Goberville with 481.1 points.
The Indian pair claimed the top spot in mixed-team event for the third consecutive time. They had climbed the podium together for the first time in the newly introduced mixed team event at the ISSF World Cup in New Delhi back in February. They won their second gold in the event at the World Cup Rifle/Pistol series being held in Gabala, Azerbaijan in June. However, this is the first time that the mixed-team event is being held officially at an ISSF World Cup.
The mixed team competitions were organised as test events in the World Cups held earlier this year and will be making their Olympic debut in the Tokyo 2020 Games.
Earlier, Rai and Sidhu had qualified for the final with a top-of-the-table total score of 767 points. India, France, China, Ukraine and Chinese Taipei were the teams that had qualified for the final.