India sneak ahead of China in junior worlds medal tally

CHANGWON: India with four gold medals finished day three in the top position of the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Championship Juniors in Changwon, sneaking past China that has won three gold medals so far.

Parth Mane, Abhinav Shaw and Dhanudh Srikanth combined in the Men’s 10m Air Rifle Team event to win India’s only gold of the day.

The squad also picked up a silver through Raiza Dhillon in the Women’s Skeet and a bronze, through Umamahesh Madineni in the Men’s 10m Air Rifle individual competition, for an overall haul of four golds, two silvers and three bronze medals thus far, with six more competition days left.

The trio of Parth, Abhinav and Dhanush, shot a combined total of 1886.7 in the Men’s 10m Air Rifle Team event, to leave behind China in second place, whose troika of shooters shot a total of 1883.5. Korea won bronze.

This was also Abhinav’s second gold of the tournament, given he had combined with Gautami Bhanot yesterday to win the 10m Air Rifle Mixed Team competition. In the Men’s 10m Air Rifle individual competition, besides Umamahesh, Abhinav and Dhanush also made the final top eight. Abhinav in fact topped the 64-strong field with a score of 631.4, while Dhanush was third with 629.9.

Umamahesh qualified in seventh position with a score of 627.9 but shot a brilliant final to claim bronze, ending after the 22nd shot with a tally of 229.0. He was 0.6 behind silver-winning Chinese Wang Honghao at that stage and did not shoot a single score in the 9s.

Romain Aufrere of France won gold. Abhinav finished fourth, while Dhanush finished sixth. In the Women’s 10m Air Rifle, Sonam Maskar was the only Indian finalist, finishing seventh eventually.

In the Women’s Skeet, Raiza just about bagged the sixth and final qualifying spot with a score of 110 after five rounds. She then was the slowest to start, missing four of her first seven targets, but came back brilliantly with 16 straight hits and missing just one of the next 27 targets to catch up with the leader.

She then missed a double but rallied brilliantly yet again to miss just one of the next 22 to tie with leader Miroslava Hockova of Slovakia at 51 hits a piece after the stipulated 60 shots. In the resulting shoot-off, she missed her second target as Hockova struck both, for a worthy silver.

In the Men’s Skeet, Harmehar Laly shot 119, to be the lone Indian finalist among six, but eventually had to settle for fifth position. Wednesday has the Women’s 25m Pistol, the Mixed Team Skeet and the Men’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions finals on schedule.