Dominant India win both men’s and women’s 10m air pistol team gold medals

PTI, Mar 21, 2021, 3:54 PM IST

New Delhi: A dominant India claimed both the gold medals on offer by some distance in the men’s and women’s 10m air pistol team events on the third competition day of the ISSF World Cup here on Sunday.

First, the terrific trio of Yashaswini Singh Deswal, Manu Bhaker and Shri Nivetha won the top prize in the women’s team 10m air pistol event.

Then, the team of Youth Olympics and Asian Games gold medallist Saurabh Chaudhary, Abhishek Verma and Shahzar Rizvi bagged the yellow metal in the men’s event, comfortably beating Vietnam 17-11 in the final.

The Indian women shot 16 in the gold medal round to finish way ahead of Poland’s Julita Borek, Joanna Iwona Wawrzonowska and Agnieszka Korejwo, who managed 8 at the Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range.

The home team topped the second qualification with a total score of 576 while the Polish women shot 567.

In the first qualification, the Indians aggregated 1731 following scores of 290, 287, 288, 287, 293 and 287 over six series. Poland’ sequence of scores read 286, 283, 286, 286, 286 and 287 for a total of 1701.

In the men’s final, Vietnam was represented by Dinh Thanh Nguyen, Quoc Cuong Tran and Xuan Chuyen Phan. Chaudhary and Co led the qualification part two with a total score of 579 while the Vietnamese managed 565.

The Indian men aggregated 1750 in the first qualification while Vietnam scored 1708.

On Saturday, the 23-year-old Deswal won the individual gold medal in the women’s 10m air rifle event ahead of compatriot Bhaker, who settled for silver.

Chaudhary and Verma claimed the silver and bronze medals respectively in the men’s individual 10m air pistol final.

A total of 294 shooters from as many as 53 countries, including Korea, Singapore, USA, United Kingdom, Iran, Ukraine, France, Hungary, Italy, Thailand and Turkey, are participating in the tournament.