India junior men’s trap team wins gold

OSIJEK: India won a sensational gold in the junior men’s trap team event at the ISSF Shotgun World Championship, beating Italy 6-4 in the final here on Saturday.

This was also India’s first medal of the Championship. USA won the bronze.

It was no mean feat for the trio of Shapath Bharadwaj, Shardul Vihan and Arya Vansh Tyagi as the Italians are long established powerhouses in the shotgun discipline.

Even more so as the Indians were trailing the Italian team of Edoardo Antonioli, Emanuele Iezzi and Gianmarco Barletta 0-4 before staging a remarkable comeback.

Earlier in the day, Shapath,

Shardul and Arya Vansh had shot a combined 205 in the qualification stage, where each member shot three rounds of 25 targets each, to finish second behind the Italians who shot 206, thereby making it to the gold medal match.

Nothing came easy for the Indians on the day as they tied with team USA on the same score and then beat them 2-0 in a shoot-off to ensure a medal for themselves. In the final, all the three Indians missed a target each in the first 15-shot shoot-off.

The Italians missed two and took the first two points. Luck kept eluding the Indians till the second shoot-off, where they missed two out of 15, only to find the Italians missing just one to take the round and go 4-0 up.