ISSF Junior World Championship 2024: India adds five more gold medals

Divanshi and Mukesh Nelavalli clinched gold medals in their respective women’s and men’s 25m pistol as India added another five gold medals on day four of the ISSF Junior World Championship in Lima, Peru.

The added haul took India’s overall tally to 14 with the country’s shooters claiming 10 gold, one silver and three bronze medals so far in the competition.

USA (10) and Italy (8) are placed second and third respectively.

Divanshi shot a score of 35 to pip Italian Cristina Magnani by two points in the final as France’s Heloise Fourre was third.

Divanshi bagged another gold on the fourth day as she teamed up with Tejaswini and Vibhuti Bhatia to win the junior women’s 25m pistol team with a combined tally of 1711 ahead of Czechia and Germany.

Divanshi had a tough road to winning the gold medal after missing seven of her first 15 targets in the final, which put her in sixth position initially.

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However, Divanshi staged a fine recovery to hit 16 of her next 20 to move up to second with three more series of five shots remaining in the 10-series final.

The silver winning Magnani, who had led from the beginning, found herself tied with Divanshi on 31-hits after the ninth series as the Indian nailed a four when it mattered most, while the Italian missed three.

France’s Heloise Fourre, who had piped Divanshi to second after the eighth series, had to settle for bronze after missing three shots in the ninth series.

In the 10th and final series, Divanshi repeated her four-hits score from the ninth series to seal the deal, as the Italian went down missing three targets yet again.

Earlier in the day, Divanshi reached the final by finishing fifth in qualification with a score of 577 over the precision and rapid-fire rounds of 30-shots each.

Tejaswini (569) was 13th, Vibhuti (565) was 22nd and Naamya Kapoor was 40th with 552.

Nelavalli also added two more golds to take his tally to three for the championship so far.

He picked up the junior men’s 25m Pistol gold with a score of 585, putting him two ahead of compatriot Suraj Sharma, who won India’s first silver of the competition.

Nelavalli, Sharma and Pradhyumn Singh (561) combined to snatch the team gold in the event from Poland, whose tally of 1726 fell three short of India’s. Italy was third.

India’s fifth gold of day four came in the junior men’s 50m rifle 3 positions (3P) team competition, when Shourya Saini, Vedant Nitin Waghmare and Parikshit Singh Brar tallied 1753 to equal the junior world record in the elimination round to win gold.

Norway was five points behind in second while Sweden were a further two behind in third.

Shourya then made it to the final, finishing seventh in the qualification round, with a score of 583 over the three positions. He finished seventh eventually.