Avani Lekhara bags silver for India in Para Shooting World Cup

Shooter Avani Lekhara clinched a silver medal in women’s 10m air rifle (R2) on the opening day of the World Shooting Para Sport World Cup in Osijek, Croatia. Despite a shaky start to the finals where the 2020 Paralympic quota winner Avani registered four shots on the 9th ring out of the first ten shots and was placed sixth,  a perfect 10.9 on her 12th shot helped her climb to the third place.

“The bad start instigated me to focus and shoot better towards the end of the final."

She maintained the top three positions and with some high 10s towards the end, she took the second spot with a score of 248.2. Avani Lekhara after winning silver at the Para Shooting World Cup While Slovakia’s Veronika Vadovicova with 249.5 claimed gold, Ukraine’s Iryna Shchetnik went on to bag the bronze medal. The 17-year-old Avani has already secured a quota in women’s 50m prone at the World Cup in Al Ain, UAE, in February. Shooter Swaroop Mahavir won the bronze in men’s 10m air rifle Another Indian shooter Swaroop Mahavir Unhalkar won the bronze in men’s 10m air rifle (R1). Swaroop shot a qualification score of 615.2 to be placed fourth in the final and then shot 223.1 in the final to find a spot on the podium. The gold was won by Ukraines’s Andrii Doroshenko while Zoran Poucki of Serbia took the silver.