India’s Saurabh Chaudhary and Abhishek Verma won the silver and bronze medals respectively in the men’s 10m air pistol final on the second competition day of the ISSF World Cup in Delhi on Saturday.
This took India’s medal tally to five on the first day of finals the World Cup at the Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range. Yashaswini Singh Deswal and Manu Bhaker won gold and silver in the women’s 10m air pistol, carrying on India’s consistent performance in pistol.
The world No 4 Chaudhary trailed by 0.2 points while starting the final series of shots and was beaten by Iran’s Javed Foroughi, currently ranked 107th, in a thrilling final.
Foroughi, who had only 14 seconds on the clock to fire his final shot, scored a winning 10.5 after the 18-year-old Chaudhary managed 9.8 in his last attempt of the gold medal round. Three successive 9.6 by the Iranian opened a window of opportunity for Chaudhary, but the 41-year-old Foroughi sealed the issue in his favour with his last shot in an exciting final.
Foroughi shot a total of 243.6 to claim the top prize and Chaudhary fired 243.2 to win silver while Verma aggregated 221.8 to bag the bronze.
Former world No 1 Indian Shahzar Rizvi bowed out in fifth place with a score of 177.1.
Earlier in the day, all three Indians in the fray qualified for the final.
Youth Olympic and Asian Games gold medallist Chaudhary topped the qualifications with 587 after a sequence of series that read 96 98 97 98 99 99. Verma was second with 583 after a series of 96 98 99 97 97 96 while Rizvi was fourth with 580 (98 97 97 97 95 96).
Earlier, World No 1 Divyansh Singh Panwar opened India’s medals tally with a bronze in the men’s 10m air rifle.
