Shahzar Rizvi┬áended the year by winning gold — with a new national record — in the Men 10m Air Pistol at the 61st National Shooting Championship, which concluded in Thiruvananthapuram.
The Air Force shooter who shot the second best qualification score of 583, shot 241.7 in the finals to win the gold and also rewrote his own final national record of 240.7 set in Brisbane earlier this year.
This was the second national title for Shahzar who had won his first title at the 2015 Nationals held in Delhi.
Army’s Yashwant Singh won the silver with a score of 237.7 while teammate Omprakash Mitherwal won the bronze, securing 218.0 in the finals.
Earlier this year, the 23-year-old Shahzar won gold medals at the Commonwealth Shooting Championship in Australia and at the Asian Airgun Championship in Japan as well.
Ace shooter Jitu Rai finished 6th in a field of 568 shooters. Jitu, however, won a gold in the team event for his third gold of the tournament after the individual and the team gold medals he had won in the 50m pistol event.
In the junior category, Anmol Jain of Haryana won gold with a new final national record of 244.1, bettering the previous record of Saurabh Chaudhary ÔÇô 218.5 ÔÇô by a huge margin.
Saurabh of Uttar Pradesh also had a better score than the previous record as he finished second with 238.8, while Pankaj Yadav of Border Security Force won the bronze with 218.6.
Saurabh, however, won the youth category gold with a new final national record. He shot a score of 245.3 in the finals to rewrite his own record of 243.1 as he took the title ahead of Chandigarh Udhayveer Sidhu (240.8) and Haryana Sarabjot Singh (221.3).
A total of 4,800 men and women shooters from across the country participated in the national championship, including 200 wildcard entries.