Neeru’s double gold, podium sweep by pistol girls, highlight as India reach 50 medals

Neeru Dhanda. 

Khel Today Bureau

New Delhi: Indian shooters logged 50 medals at the 16^th Asian Shooting Championship in Shymkent, Kazakhstan, after Neeru Dhanda won the women’s trap gold and the junior women’s 25m pistol trio of Payal Khatri (gold), Naamya Kapoor (silver) and Tejaswini (bronze), registered a podium sweep in the individual event, as competition day eight concluded at the Shymkent Shooting Plaza.

In the women’s trap, Preeti Rajak fell short at 105, btut Neeru (20,23,20,23,21) and Aashima Ahlawat (21,23,22,20,21), who won bronze with 29 hits, shot five-round totals of 107 each to finish fifth and sixth in qualification. A three-shot shoot-off was needed to decide their bib numbers. Qatar’s Ray Bassil took bib one winning a three-way shoot-off at 110.

The final was a tight contest between the two Indians, the Qatari and Japan’s Nanami Miyasaka in the initial stages and later Chinese Taipei’s Liu Wan-Yu emerged as challenger as Miyasaka faded.

In the end Ray ousted Aashima on bib number after both tied at 29 after 40-targets but Neeru was on song hitting all 10 of her last targets and 22 out of the last 25, to run away with the gold at 43-hits. Ray Bassil finished with 37.

(L-R) Naamya Kapoor, Payal Khatri and Tejaswani after clean sweep in the 25m Women Pistol Junior. 

The Indian trio bagged the team gold as well with their tally of 319, 18 ahead of the silver winning Chinese.

Clean sweep

In the junior women’s 25m pistol, Naamya topped the qualifications with a score of 581 and was followed by teammate Tejaswini who tallied 577. Payal made the finals with a 569 giving her the sixth qualifying spot.

Payal and Tejaswini also joined forces with Riya Shirish Thatte (554) to win the team silver in the event behind the Koreans with a combined tally of 1700.

In the final lasting 10-series of five rapid-fire shots each, Payal, Naamya and Tejaswini, had to mostly go at each other more than their Korean, Indonesian and Malaysian opponents, with the first named breaking through by getting four-hits each from the sixth to the ninth series and a 5/5 in the 10^th to clinch gold with 36 hits to her name.

Naamya won silver with 30, whereas Tejaswini, fresh from a junior ISSF world cup win, settled for bronze with 27 hits.

Bhowneesh wins silver

Also winning a good silver on the day was Bhowneesh Mendiratta in the men’s trap. He qualified with 118 (25,24,23,22,24), fighting for 4^th place after coming second in a three-way shoot-off.

He then came up against China’s Qi Ying, the Paris Olympic silver medalist, in the six-man final and did well to keep pace and finish with 45 hits, falling just two short of the Chinese.

Manu, Esha finish outside medals

Earlier in the women’s 25m pistol, it was a blockbuster final with two Olympic champion Koreans, Yang Jiin the event champion and Oh Yejin the women’s air pistol champion, line-up alongside Paris double medalist Manu Bhaker of India, double Paris finalist Thu Vinh Trinh of Vietnam as also India’s former junior world champion Esha Singh.

However, the Olympic champions were the first to be eliminated in the final with two of the three qualified Chinese finalists, Zhang Yueyue and Xiao Jiaruixian finishing 1-2 and Thu picking up bronze.

Manu lay fifth after a perfect fifth series with Esha in sixth, a point behind. Zhang led with 20 at that stage. Esha could not survive the sixth series bowing out with 18 hits and then Manu had a one-hit eighth series which made her end fourth.

Esha, Manu and Simranpreet Kaur Brar tally of 1749 gave them the team bronze as China took another gold and Korea silver.

India’s tally at the top of the standings stood at 28 gold, 10 silver and 12 bronze medals with three more competition days left in the championship.