Riya Shirish stuns top field to clinch 25m pistol shooting national title

Aurangabad teenager Riya Shirish Thatte, stunned a top field in the 67thNational Shooting Championship Competitions (NSCC) women’s 25m pistol final here at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range (DKSSR), to land her first senior national title.

Riya got the better of Punjab’s Simranpreet Kaur Brar 7-2 in a shoot-off for gold, after both had tied at 31-hits in the 8-series of five-shots decider. Olympian and former Asian Games champion Rahi Sarnobat was third with 25 hits.

Simranpreet rounded off a great year to win the junior women’s title on the day to add to her senior silver, this time winning the gold shoot-off 5-2 over Haryana’s Payal, after both had tied on 34-hits-a-piece. Riya won bronze in this category with 30-hits.

Riya’s father Shirish, a former national level shooter himself and her first coach who is also accompanying the shooter said, “She had tears in her eyes. There is no range in Aurangabad and we used to travel 250kms to Pune’s Balewadi range where Akshay Ashtaputre, also the mentor of Swapnil Kusale, has been coaching her for the last five years. She wants to shoot and earn laurels for India.”

The senior finals field, besides Simranpreet, who was in contention to make the Paris Olympics this year and Rahi, also had such top former internationals as Heena Sidhu and Annu Raj Singh among others.

Earlier Simranpreet topped both the qualification stages with identical scores of 584. Riya, while qualifying second in the juniors, managed to make the final, clinching the eighth and last qualifying spot with scores of 576.