Teenage pair of Shiva Narwal and Esha Singh won India’s first-ever mixed team gold medal at the World Shooting Championships when they clinched the 10m air pistol event in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Friday.
Esha Singh, 18, and 17-year-old Shiva Narwal defeated Turkish pair of Sevval Ilayda Tarhan and Yusuf Dikec 16-10 in the final to top the podium. China beat Iran for the bronze.
This was India’s second medal at the championships after the 10m air pistol team’s bronze on Thursday. Shiva Narwal was also a part of the team alongside Sarabjot Singh and Arjun Singh Cheema.
Earlier, the Indian duo had shot a score of 583 to top qualification and Turkey followed with 581. Divya Thadigol Subbaraju and Sarabjot Singh, the second team in the fray, finished 22nd in qualifying with a score of 574.
Before the Baku meet, India had won six gold medals at the ISSF World Championships, with five coming from individual events. Arjun Babuta, Kiran Ankush Jadhav and Rudrankksh Patil won the men’s 10m air rifle team gold last year to claim India’s first gold in a team event.
Meanwhile, none of the Indian shooters in action in the 10m air rifle mixed team event progressed to the medal rounds. Mehuli Ghosh and Olympian Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar finished ninth in qualifying with a total of 630.2 while Ramita and Divyansh Singh Panwar could only manage 628.3 to come in 17th.
In the women’s skeet event, Parinaaz Dhaliwal (19th), Ganemat Sekhon (21st) and Darshna Rathore (38th) all failed to make it past the qualifying round. The trio’s combined score of 351, meanwhile, placed India fourth in the team event behind the USA, Italy and Slovakia.
The World Championship is a qualifying event for the Paris 2024 Olympics. A total of 48 Olympic quotas are on offer with the top four finishers in each of the 12 Olympic individual shooting events booking a place for their national teams.