India Sweeps 10m Air Pistol Event at Commonwealth Shooting
Shahzar Rizvi, Omkar Singh and Jitu Rai won gold, silver and bronze at the Commonwealth Shooting Championship.
Indian pistol shooters on 1 November pulled off a clean sweep in the 10m air pistol event at the Commonwealth Shooting Championship with Shahzar Rizvi, Omkar Singh and Jitu Rai winning gold, silver and bronze medals respectively.
In the 10m women's air rifle event, Pooja Ghatkar bagged a gold, while her countrymate Anjum Moudgil won the silver medal. The bronze in this event went to Martina Lindsay Veloso of Singapore.
On the second day of the tournament, India bagged as many as five medals, including two gold, two silver and one bronze medal.
The day started with Shahzar topping the 16-man qualification round with a score of 581. Omkar and Jitu followed him into the eight-man final with 576 and 571, respectively.
Omkar then led till the 18th shot before the youngster took control from the 20th shot. By the end of the allotted 24 shots, Shahzar ended with 240.7.
Jitu won bronze with 214.1.
In the women's 10m air rifle, Singapore's star rifle shooter, Jasmine Xer, topped the qualification with 419.8 – a Commonwealth qualification record and her teammate, Martina Veloso shot 417.5 to finish second.
Meghana, with 416.6, Pooja with 415.3 and Anjum with 414.1 qualified in third, fourth and sixth positions respectively.
In the eight-woman final, however, it was Anjum who started the strongest, leading the field after five shots. But Pooja soon showed her class, to take the lead after 10 shots and held on to win with a final score of 249.8.
Anjum ended with 248.7 to win silver, while Veloso won bronze with a score of 224.8. Meghana shot 183.8.
In the men's Skeet, the Indian trio of Mairaj Ahmad Khan, Angad Vir Singh Bajwa and Sheeraz Sheikh shot 119 each out of 125 in qualification to get into a shoot-off and qualify for the finals.
Mairaj and Angad made it through to the six-man final to eventually finish fifth and sixth respectively.
On the first day of the tournamet, Heena Sidhu claimed the 10m air pistol gold, while Deepak Kumar fetched a silver in the 10m air rifle event to give India a fine start at the Championships on 31 October.
Sidhu shot a combined score of 626.2 (386+240.8) to claim the top honours.
This was Sidhu's second successive international gold after she, along with Jitu Rai, claimed the top position in the 10m air pistol mixed team event in the ISSF World Cup Finals in Delhi earlier this month.
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