India picked up three more gold medals to go with two bronze, including a double gold by Udhayveer Sidhu, to consolidate their second position in the ISSF World Championship in Cairo, Egypt on Saturday.
Udhayveer won both the Junior Men’s 25m and Standard Pistol titles while Esha Singh came first in the Junior Women’s 25m Pistol as India ended the day with four gold and three bronze medals to lie behind China who have eight gold and a total of 16 medals.
India have also picked up one Olympic Quota after Rudrankksh Patil stunned a high-quality field on Friday to become the World Champion in Men’s 10m Air Rifle.
Udhayveer shot a combined score of 580 after the precision and rapid fire rounds in the junior men’s sports pistol, to emerge on top of the 23-strong field.
Italy’s Matteo Mastrovalerio was a point behind in second while China’s Liu Yangpan won bronze with 577. In the standard pistol, he shot 568 across three stages to leave behind Yangpan, who was second with 567.
India’s Sameer also shot 567 and won the bronze on countback.
After finishing her qualification round in fourth place with a score of 581, Esha came second in her ranking match to make it to the final medal round. In the eight series of five rapid fire shots in each final, Esha shot a five and then four rounds of four hits each, to emerge the most consistent and seal the gold medal.
She eventually got 29 hits in the medal match to overcome China’s Feng Sixuan who finished with 25. Miriam Jako of Hungary won bronze. After two silvers at the Lima Junior World Championships last year, this was her first junior worlds title.
India’s second bronze of the day came from Tejaswini in Junior Women’s 25m Standard Pistol after she shot 557 to finish behind Chinese athletes. Manvi Jain was 5th with 556 and Payal Khatri was 8th with 547.
In the two Olympic Quota events of the day, India’s Shiva Narwal finished 8th in the Men’s 10m Air Pistol. He shot 583 to qualify in 6th place for the ranking match, but could not make much headway thereafter, and was among the first to be eliminated on a score of 147.6.
Naveen was unfortunate to miss out on a top eight spot after finishing in 9th place with 582. Two other shooters qualified on the same score but Naveen lost out on lesser inner 10s. Vijayveer Sidhu shot 579 to finish 19th overall.
India also missed out in the Women’s 10m Air Pistol when Rhythm Sangwan finished 17th in qualification with a score of 576. The final qualifying spot went at 580. Yuvika Tomar shot 574 to finish 25th while Palak was further back with 568 and in 50th position.
In other results, India’s Sartaj Tiwana finished eighth in the junior men’s 50m rifle 3 positions event with a score of 297.7 in the ranking match. He had qualified seventh on Friday with a score of 580.
In the junior women’s 3P, none of India’s three competitors made it beyond the qualification stage with Nishchal finishing best in 29th spot and Nikita Kundu a step lower at 30th. Both shot scores of 576. Nupur Kumrawat was 51st with 566.