Shooting: Rudrankksh, Manu, Sift win at national trials

NEW DELHI: World champion Rudrankksh Patil, Olympian Manu Bhaker and Sift Kaur Samra won their respective national shooting selection trials among Group A at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range (DKSSR), here on Tuesday.

Rudrankksh won the men's 10m Air Rifle T2 trials after finishing second in the T1 leg on Monday while Sift Kaur Samra bagged a double in the women's 50m rifle 3 positions (3P), winning the T2 trials after emerging triumphant in T1, also on Monday.

Olympian Manu Bhaker won the women's 25m pistol T1 trials.

Maharashtra's Rudrankksh overcame the Army's seasoned Chain Singh 17-13 in the gold medal face-off. He had finished fourth in qualification with a score of 630.8 while Chain shot 630 to qualify sixth. Assam's Hriday Hazarika topped qualification with a sizzling 633.6, but eventually finished fourth as the Railways' Shahu Tushar Mane bagged bronze.

The 1-2 in the T2 women's 3P was the same as the T1 trials, as Punjab's Sift Kaur Samra yet again beat state-mate and the country's top women's 3P shooter Anjum Moudgil 16-14 in the gold medal match.

Odisha's Shriyanka Sadangi won bronze. Sift and Anjum finished in the same order in qualification with the former shooting 589 to the latter's 588. In the top eights she shot 408.7 to top, while Anjum shot 408 to finish second.

In the women's 25m pistol T1 trials, Olympian Manu Bhaker took the honours with 27 hits in the medal match. Madhya Pradesh's (MP) Chinki Yadav was second with 21 while Telangana's Esha Singh was third with 17 hits to her name.

The Haryana girl had earlier qualified for the semi-finals in third position with a score of 581. Her state-mate Rhythm Sangwan topped the qualifiers with 583. Manu then topped the first semi-finals to make it to the four-woman medal round.

Amonth the juniors, MP's Nupur Kumrawat won the junior women's 3P T2 trials while Jharkhand's Sheersh Aditya Kashyap won the men's 10m air rifle T2 trials. Punjab's Arshdeep Kaur also won the junior women's 25m pistol T1 trials to make it two golds for Punjab on the day.