Former Champion Rudrankksh Patil, Olympians, Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar and Divyansh Singh Panwar, broke the World record to claim India’s first gold medal in 10m air rifle team event at the Asian Games 2023 in Hangzhou, on Monday.
Competing at the Fuyang Yinhu Sports Centre, the Indian trio shot 1893.7 to claim the top spot and shatter the previous world record of 1893.3 set by the Chinese shooters at the World Championships in August. Korea claimed silver with 1890.1 points while China settled for bronze with a score of 1888.2.
This was also India’s 10th gold medal in shooting at the Asian Games but their first in rifle events.
Aishwary Pratap Tomar went on to win a bronze medal in the individual category as well before the 25m rapid fire pistol team of Vijayveer Sidhu, Anish Bhanwala and Adarsh Singh also added a bronze to the tally later in the day.
Medals in the team event were awarded on the basis of cumulative scores of the shooters from each country in the qualifying round.
Rudrankksh Patil top-scored for India with 632.5 points and finished third in the qualifying round. Tomar came fifth with 631.6 while Panwar hit 629.6 to finish eighth.
Since only two from a country could progress to the eight-man final in the individual event, Panwar missed out on a place in the eight-man final.
Tomar beat Rudrankksh Patil in a tight shoot-off for bronze with a total score of 228.8. Rudrankksh Patil was eliminated with a score of 208.7 and finished fourth. China’s Lihao Sheng scored 253.3 for a new world record in the final while Hajun Park of South Korea took home silver with 251.3 points.
In the 25m rapid-fire pistol, Vijayveer Sidhu, Adarsh Singh and Anish Bhanwala scored 1718 points to bag the bronze medal and take India’s medals tally in shooting to five in Hangzhou.
Vijayveer scored 582 out of 1718 for sixth place in the qualifying round and made the cut for the final. Adarsh Singh, 576, and Anish Bhanwala, 560, finished 14th and 22nd, respectively.
However, Vijayveer could not recover from a poor start in the final and scored 21 from a series of six to finish fourth behind medallists Yuehong Li from China (33), Yangpan Liu from China (31) and Kazakhstan’s Nikita Chiryukin (26).
The shooting events at the Asian Games 2023 will be held till October 1. A total of 33 gold medals are up for grabs in rifle, pistol and shotgun categories.