Indian 50m pistol women’s team of Tiyana, Sakshi Suryavanshi and Kirandeep Kaur shot a combined score of 1573-6x to win the gold medal at the World Shooting Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Friday. China finished second with a score of 1567-9x while Mongolia took the bronze with a combined score of 1566-3x.
In the men’s 50m pistol team event, the trio of Ravinder Singh, Kamaljeet and Vikram Jagannath Shinde finished third for the bronze medal with a combined score of 1646-28x. China (1655-32x points) won the gold while the silver went to Korea (1654-30x).
In the Individual events, Tiyana and Ravinder Singh won bronze medals in the women’s and men’s category, respectively.
Tiyana scored 533 to finish third in the individual 50m pistol women’s final, which saw 14 shooters compete. Austria’s Sylvia Steiner (540 points) and Mongolian Bayartsetseg T umurchudur (534) won the gold and the silver medals, respectively.
In the 50m pistol men’s final, Ravinder Singh shot 556 to finish behind Xie Yu (558) of China and Latvia’s Lauris Strautmanis (557).
Earlier Rajeshwari Kumari earned the seventh Paris Olympics quota in shooting for India after finishing fifth in the women’s trap final .
As London Olympic champion Jessica Rossi, the eventual silver medalist in Baku, had already obtained an Olympic quota for Italy earlier, Rajeshwari obtained the quota for India by finishing fifth in the medal round. It was also 31-year Indian’s best result at the world championships.
Rajeshwari shot 19 of her 30 shots on target in the final. Jessica Rossi claimed the silver with 39/50 and was pipped to the top podium by Lin Yi Chun of the Chinese Taipei, who scored 40/50. Kathrin Murche of Germany won bronze with 28/40.
In the qualifying round, Rajeshwari came third in a field of 75 after scoring 120 from her five sets. Manisha Keer finished 23rd with a score of 115 while Preeti Rajah was 58th with 109. The Indian trio finished fifth in the team standings with a cumulative score of 344.
She obtained India’s seventh Paris 2024 quota in shooting but it was the first in the women’s trap event. A country can only obtain a maximum of two quotas in each individual event.
Earlier in the day, the men’s 25m center fire pistol team of Rajendra Bagul, Akshay Jain and Gaurav Chaudhary secured a bronze medal with a cumulative score of 1718.
In the individual section, Rajendra Bagul was the best-placed Indian at 12th in the field of 38 with a score of 575. Akshay Jain shot 573 to come 17th and Gaurav Chaudhary was 21st with 570.
With these medals, India’s overall tally rose to 14 – six gold and eight bronze – at the World Championships .
Indians had a good outing in Baku. Besides the medals, Rajeshwari Kumari (trap), Sift Kaur Samra (50m rifle 3 positions), Akhil Sheoran (50m rifle 3 positions) and Mehuli Ghosh (10m air rifle) secured four Paris Olympics quotas for the country at the championships.
The qualifying events for the Olympics in Baku concluded on Thursday. The competitions in non-Olympic shooting events will continue till August 31.
