Shooting Junior World C’ship: Manu Bhaker shines; India win pistol mixed and rifle men’s team gold

India added two more golds to their kitty on competition day three Sunday, at the ongoing International Shooting Sport Federation Junior World Championship in Lima, Peru, with Manu Bhaker winning her second gold of the tournament, this time in partnership with Sarabjot Singh in the 10m Air Pistol Mixed Team event and the troika of Srikanth Dhanush, Rajpreet Singh and Paarth Makhija picking up the 10m Air Rifle Men’s Team title.

Manu and Sarabjot led an India 1-2 in the Air Pistol Mixed team competition where they fought off the challenge of the second Indian pair of Shikha Narwal and Naveen 16-12 in the gold medal match.

Earlier in the qualification round featuring eight teams, both the Indian pairs finished 1-2 as well with Manu and Sarabjot shooting 386 while Shikha and Naveen were a point behind with 385.

In the Junior Men’s 10M Air Rifle Team event, the trio of Srikanth, Rajpreet and Paarth had also made it to the gold medal match by virtue of topping their six-team qualification round with a combined total of 1886.9. Each shooter shot 60-shots each in the qualification round.

In the final, they beat a strong US team comprising reigning Olympic champion William Shaner, besides Rylan Kissel and John Blanton by a margin of 16-6.

India also picked up another silver medal on the day when the pair of Rajpreet Singh and Atmika Gupta went down fighting to USA’s William Shaner and Mary Carolyn Tucker in the 10M Air Rifle Mixed Team competition by a margin of 15-17.

Rajpreet and Atmika had finished second behind US pair in qualification as well with a combined 418.5 after 20-shots each. The US pair shot 419.9 to top the eight-team field.

Two other Indian teams in the 10M Air Rifle Women and 10M Air Pistol Men competitions had also reached the gold medal matches after their respective qualifying rounds.

Competitions on day three were still underway and at the time of writing India were leading the medal tally with four gold, five silver and two bronze medals for a total of 11 medals.