Asian Shooting Championships: Indian junior women’s 10m air rifle team clinches gold
The Indian women’s junior 10m air rifle team, comprising Sonam Uttam Maskar, Gautami Bhanot and Jasmeen Kaur, clinched the gold medal with a junior meet record in the Asian Shooting Championships in Changwon, Korea on Thursday.
The team aggregated 1891.6 points for the top podium finish. Sonam shot 632.6, Gautami 631.9 and Jasleen 627.1 to break the Asian junior record of 1883.3, which stood in the name of the Indian trio of Mehuli Ghosh, Elavenil Valarivan and Shreya Agarwal in 2019.
Gautami also won the individual silver shooting 251.3 and finishing behind China’s Jiao Ruoxuan, who shot 252.4. Sonam finished fourth.
In 10m air rifle men’s youth event, Abhinav Choudhary bagged gold shooting 241.8, while Priyanshu Yadav, who had also made it to the finals, ended up fourth.
In men’s junior 10m air rifle event, the India team was disqualified after one of the members, Dhanush Srikanth, was disqualified because of his shooting trouser not conforming to the International Shooting Sport Federations (ISSF) specifications.
The team, comprising the trio of Dhanush, Abhinav Shaw and Umamahesh Maddineni, was gunning for gold and an Asian Junior record before the massive disappointment struck them.
Abhinav Shaw though had some consolation as he clinched an individual bronze after making it to the eight-shooter finals, shooting 227.6. Umamahesh too entered the finals but finished fourth.
In 10m air pistol women’s youth final, Urva Chaudhary bagged the bronze medal with a score of 218.5 after scoring 573 in the qualification round. Kanishka Dagar and Sanskriti Bana also made it to the eight-shooter finals but finished fifth and sixth respectively.
In men’s 50m pistol, Ravinder Singh bagged the silver with a score of 556, while the team of Ravinder (556), Aniket Vinayak (534) and Ram Babu (530) bagged bronze with an aggregate of 1620.