Mehuli Ghosh won both the senior and junior women’s 10m air rifle trials on Tuesday. It was the sixth (T6) national shooting trial. A day later on Wednesday at New Delhi’s Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range, she repeated the double, this time sweeping trial seven (T7).
The diminutive teenager from West Bengal, who already has seven international medals to her name over the last two years, continued her stellar showing through the week, besting a quality finals field consisting of the world’s three best women 10m air rifle shooters, to win the senior final with a score of 251.9.
She then went on to win the junior final with an even better 252.7, just 0.2 off teammate and world number one Apurvi Chandela’s finals world record score of 252.9.
Madhya Pradesh’s Shreya Agrawal lost her second final in two days to Mehuli, finishing behind her in the T6 seniors on Tuesday and then again the T7 juniors on Wednesday, where she finished with a score of 252. Shreya was in-fact third in the T7 senior final as well with 228.3.
Gujarat’s Elavenil Valarivan, fresh from her gold medal-winning exploits in the recently concluded ISSF World Cup stage in Rio, came in second in the T7 senior finals, shooting a score of 251.0. Elavenil had earlier topped the qualification round with a sublime 631.1.
Apurvi and world number two Anjum finished sixth and fourth in the senior finals respectively.
Zeena Khitta of Himachal Pradesh won the Youth Women’s 10m air rifle T7 trial overcoming Atmika Gupta of Rajasthan 251.1 to 248.8. She had also won the T6 trial in the same category on Tuesday. Khushi Saini of Punjab was the other standout performer in the event, making it to all three finals.
Akhil Sheoran of the Railways, an ISSF World Cup stage gold medal winner last year, won the Men’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions (3P) T7 trials with a final round score of 455.5. MP’s Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar came second with 455.0 while Army’s Satyendra Singh came third with 443.5.
Aishwarya, however, won the junior men’s T7 trial in the same event. The highest qualification score in the Men’s 3P throughout the day however, was registered by the Indian Air Force’s Deepak Kumar who topped the senior T7 qualifications with a score of 1165.
Delhi’s Arpit Goel, who has appeared for India this year, won the T7 Men’s 25m Rapid Fire Pistol (RFP) trials with a finals score of 30. He overcame Maharashtra’s Harshwardhan Yadav, who shot 28. Udhayveer Sidhu of Chandigarh came third here but managed to win the junior RFP with a finals score of 32. He overwhelmed Haryana’s Anish Bhanwala who shot 29 to come second, and Anish’s state and India teammate Adarsh Singh, who shot 23 to finish third.
