Anish shoots his way to World Championship silver

(L-R) Anish Bhanwala (India), Clement Bessaguet (France), Maksym Horodynets (Ukraine). 

Khel Today Bureau

New Delhi: Olympian Anish Bhanwala survived a total of four shoot-offs to clinch silver, his first senior individual world championship medal on competition day two of the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Championship Rifle/Pistol in Cairo. The 23-year-old kept his composure in the second last series to survive a double shoot off against bronze medal winner, Maksym Horodynets of Ukraine and go into the final series to shoot for the gold medal, which was eventually won by Clement Bessaguet of France, who upgraded his back-to-back silver medals in the competition. Earlier, Anish survived another double shoot-off for fourth place against Emanuel Mueller of Germany.

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“It is difficult to explain in words but the feeling is completely unreal”, said an excited Anish in the post-match interview to ISSF. “I have tried a lot of times before; my preparation has been good but I could not deliver when it came to the competition. This time I was better prepared in my training and things worked out in my favour”, said Anish who has also booked his place for the World Cup Final which will be held in Doha next month.

Earlier in the day, Anish had qualified for the six-man final, in second place with a score of 585-22x over two days. He started the finals in fine fashion with a perfect series and followed it up with two series of four hits out of five. At the first elimination, Anish was safely placed on 16 hits after series number four. He added six more hits in the next two rounds, which forced a double shootout against Mueller of Germany, in which Anish held his nerve to hit four hits in the second one. In the seventh series, Anish equalled Horodynets’s score to force another shoot-off in which Anish responded to the Ukrainian’s four hits with four hits of his own. In the second set of the shoot-off, Horodynet’s could only manage two hits while Anish hit four to confirm the silver medal. In the final series, Anish needed to hit a perfect series to challenge Clement Bessaguet who already had a score of 29, but the Indian could only manage three hits, effectively confirming the gold medal for the Frenchman before his last five shots.

Earlier in the day, the Air Rifle mixed teams could not qualify for the medal matches, as the pair of Arjun Babuta and Elavenil Valarivan finished in eighth with a combined score of 632.3, 1.6 points less than the fourth-place pair. The second pair of Rudrankksh Patil and Shreya Agrawal finished in 21st with a score of 628.8.

India’s star trio of Suruchi Singh, Manu Bhaker and Esha Singh will be in action on Monday in the 10 m Pistol event.