Shooting Olympic Trials: Ramita torments WR, Manu Bhaker cements her place

Bhopal: It was a dramatic women's 10m air rifle qualification round at M.P. Shooting Range in Bhopal on Saturday as Ramita Jindal shot with utmost perfection to go beyond world record and move up in the leaderboard for Olympic selection.

In the final qualification round of the Shooting Olympic trials, Ramita shot 634.6 (0.1 more than the existing world record set by China’s Han Jiayu at the Baku World Cup) and moved up to second in the leaderboard.

Olympian Elavenil Valarivan leads the chart while it looks like the end of road for Tokyo Olympian Mehuli Ghosh.

Manu Bhaker confidently topped the women’s 10M Air Pistol OST standings, finishing on top of the qualification round with a score of 581. Surbhi Rao (577) was second while Palak (572) was third. Rhythm Sangwan was fourth on the same score as Palak’s but lost out on inner 10s while Esha Singh was fifth with 572.

With her good show in these trials, Manu is expected to play three events at Paris Olympics including 10m air pistol, 10m air pistol mixed team, and 25m pistol rapid fire.

In the men’s air rifle, the results had no bearing on the standings as Sandeep Singh (fourth with 628.3) and Arjun Babuta (fifth with 624.7) maintained their top two positions in the calculations.

In the men’s air pistol, Sarabjot Singh shot 584 to top the OST T4 qualifications, while Arjun Singh Cheema was second with 583. Varun Tomar (577) was third, Ravinder Singh (576) fourth and Naveen (574) finished fifth.

Those results in air pistol meant that in the present calculations, Manu Bhaker and Rhythm Sangwan are 1-2 in the women’s air pistol while Sarabjot Singh and Arjun Singh Cheema have the top two slots in the men’s event.

Sift continues her dominance in 50m 3P

Asian Games gold medalist Sift Kaur Samra continued her domination and won her third women's 50m rifle 3 Positions trial.

Sift shot 461.3 in the women’s 3P OST T4 final to edge out Nischal by a point. Ashi Chouksey was third with 448.1. Shriyanka Sadangi and Anjum Moudgil were fourth and fifth respectively in the five-woman field.

The results confirmed Sift as the top finisher in women’s 3P, considering three best scores out of the four trials. Anjum Moudgil also confirmed her position as second best of the trials among the five qualified shooters.

In the men’s 3P Aishwary Tomar and Swapnil Kusale finished 1-2 after the competition of four trial matches.