Asian Shooting C'ships: Junior Indian shooters clinch four gold

Indian junior shooters reigned supreme at the Asian Shooting Championships with four gold medals and a meet record in Changwon, Korea on Thursday.

Harmehar Lally won the junior men’s Skeet, hitting 52 of the 60 targets in the final to lead an Indian 1-2 as Bhavtegh Gill clinched silver with 50 hits. The duo also teamed up with Rituraj Bundela to win the team gold in the event.

The Indian women's junior 10m air rifle team, comprising Sonam Uttam Maskar, Gautami Bhanot, and Jasmeen Kaur, clinched the gold medal with a junior meet record.

The team aggregated 1891.6 points for the top podium finish. Sonam shot 632.6, Gautami 631.9, and Jasleen 627.1 to break the Asian junior record of 1883.3, which stood in the name of the Indian trio of Mehuli Ghosh, Elavenil Valarivan and Shreya Agarwal in 2019.

Gautami also won the individual silver shooting 251.3 and finishing behind China's Jiao Ruoxuan, who shot 252.4. Sonam finished fourth.

The medal rush began early on Thursday with the junior women’s Skeet, when Raiza Dhillon, Mufaddal Deesawala, and Sanjana Sood shot a total of 332 to win the junior women’s Skeet team gold.

Raiza, who had topped the qualification round with a score of 116 out of 125, then went on to finish behind Diana Sabekova in the six-woman 60-shot final.

In the 10m air rifle men's youth event, Abhinav Choudhary bagged gold shooting 241.8, while Priyanshu Yadav, who had also made it to the finals, ended up fourth.

In the men's junior 10m air rifle event, the India team was disqualified after one of the members, Dhanush Srikanth, was disqualified because his shooting trousers did not conform to the specifications of the International Shooting Sports Federation (ISSF).

The team, comprising the trio of Dhanush, Abhinav Shaw, and Umamahesh Maddineni, was gunning for gold and an Asian Junior record before the massive disappointment struck them.

Abhinav Shaw though had some consolation as he clinched an individual bronze after making it to the eight-shooter finals, shooting 227.6. Umamahesh too entered the finals but finished fourth.

In the 10m air pistol women's youth final, Urva Chaudhary bagged the bronze medal with a score of 218.5 after scoring 573 in the qualification round. Kanishka Dagar and Sanskriti Bana also made it to the eight-shooter finals but finished fifth and sixth respectively.

In men's 50m pistol, Ravinder Singh bagged the silver with a score of 556, while the team of Ravinder (556), Aniket Vinayak (534), and Ram Babu (530) bagged bronze with an aggregate of 1620.