India wins gold in women’s 25m pistol team event, 4th yellow metal for Bhaker

PTI, Oct 7, 2021, 10:32 AM IST

Source: NRAI

Lima: The Indian women’s team of Manu Bhaker, Rhythm Sangwan, and Naamya Kapoor clinched a gold medal in the 25m pistol event to continue the country’s domination at the ongoing International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) Junior World Championship here.
The Indian team beat the USA 16-4 in the gold medal match.

This was Baker’s fourth gold of the competition to go with one bronze, while it was the 14-year-old Kapoor’s second gold of the championship. She had become the newly-crowned world junior champion in the individual 25m pistol event.

India also picked up a silver medal in the men’s 25m rapid fire pistol event when Adarsh Singh lost to USA’s Henry Turner Leverett in the six-man final.

At the end of day eight of the championship on Wednesday, India topped the medal tally with nine gold, seven silver, and three bronze. The USA was second with five gold and a total of 16 medals.

The troika of Manu, Rhythm, and Naamya, faced little competition throughout as they took a commanding lead of 10-4 before the beginning of the eighth series of rapid-fire shots and then closed out at 16-4.

On Tuesday, they had finished on top of round one qualification with a combined effort of 878, which was six points clear of the second-placed French team.

Later that day, they topped round two as well to ease into the gold medal match with a score of 446. The USA joined them in the final with a score of 437.

In the men’s 25m rapid-fire, India had three finalists out of six with the twins Udhayveer and Vijayveer Sidhu making it through along with Adarsh Singh.

Udhayveer was the best Indian in qualification with a score of 577 and finished fourth, while Adarsh was fifth with 574 and Vijayveer took the sixth and final qualification spot with 572.

Udhayveer and Vijayveer were the first to go out in the final. Udhayveer got nine hits in the first 20-shots to finish sixth. Vijayveer finished fifth, going out in the next series with 13 hits out of 25.

Adarsh, however, started the final on a strong note with a perfect 10 out of 10 in the first two series. However, USA’s Henry Turner Leverett turned out to be the most accurate in this match and finished with 32 hits out of 40 to win gold, while Adarsh finished with 28 to win silver.

In the 50m rifle-prone mixed team event, India finished outside the medal bracket. The pair of Sift Kaur Samra and Surya Pratap Singh made it to the second qualification round, eventually finishing sixth with a combined score of 409.5.

Ashi Chouksey and Sanskar Havelia finished ninth out 11 pairs in round one of qualification with a combined score of 604.0. The first eight pairs made it to round two.