Asian Shooting: Arjun Babuta wins 10m air rifle silver, Olympic quota place

NEW DELHI: Indian shooter Arjun Babuta clinched a silver medal in the men's 10m air rifle event along with a Paris Olympic quota place for the country at the ongoing Asian Championships in Changwon, Korea on Friday.

The 24-year-old Babuta also helped the team, including Divyansh Singh Panwar and Hriday Hazarika, clinch the gold medal with an aggregate score of 1892.4.

Babuta became the ninth Indian shooter overall to clinch an Olympic quota place for India. He also became the sixth rifle shooter in both men's and women's categories to earn a Paris berth.

Indian shooters have bagged six quota places in rifle, two in shotgun and just one in pistol. Babuta, who hails from Chandigarh but trains at the National Centre of Excellence for shooting sport at the Karni Singh Ranges, also locked the second and final Olympic quota for the country in 10m air rifle, with compatriot Rudrankksh Patil being the first – in 2022 World Championships at Cairo.

A country can win a maximum of two quota places in a particular shooting event.

Babuta shot 251.2 in the eight-shooter final to finish behind silver medallist at the 2022 Tokyo Olympics, China’s Sheng Lihao, who shot 252.1.

Another Indian Divyansh Panwar too made it to the final, but finished fourth, scoring 209.6.

Babuta shot a superb 633.4 in the qualification round to top the field, while Divyansh was third with a score of 632.3. Two other Indian shooters, Ravishankar Karthik (631.5) and Rudrankksh (630.8) too shot fine scores to be among the top-eight.

But Karthik and Rudrankksh could not enter the eight-player final as they were competing for ranking points only (RPO) and were thus not eligible for the final.

For the team gold, where only the qualification round scores are considered, Babuta shot 633.4, Divyansh 632.3 and Hazarika 626.7 to aggregate 1892.4 and pushed China to second spot with a score of 1887.3.

Japan were third with a score of 1883.6.