India’s young shooters bagged eight more medals, including five gold, on the concluding day of the ISSF Junior World Cup in Suhl, Germany on Thursday to top the medal standings.
India’s five golds came in the 10m air pistol mixed team, 25m standard pistol men junior individual and team and 25m standard pistol women junior individual and team events.
They also won the silver medal in the 10m air rifle mixed team event, a bronze in the 25m standard pistol junior men as well as in the junior women’s skeet team event, a discipline that has traditionally not won a lot of medals for India.
The highlight of the day for India was their 1-2 finish in the 10m air pistol mixed team, where the pair of Devanshi Rana and Saurabh Chaudhary edged ahead of compatriots Manu Bhaker and Anmol Jain in the five-team final to clinch gold.
Rana and Chaudhary shot a total of 478.9, a good bit ahead of silver medallists who scored 474.4.
The biggest positive for for India was topping the medal tally in the field of 61 participating countries, with 26 medals in total – 15 gold, two silver and nine bronze.
The Indian contingent overturned the result over powerhouses China, who had topped the charts in the year’s first Junior World Cup in Sydney, where India had finished second.
The Indian squad also established five new junior world records during the course of the Junior World Cup and equalled another.