Sift Kaur Samra and Vijayveer Sidhu continued to dominate the national selection trials for pistol and rifle here on Friday, while Olympian Divyansh Singh Panwar, who recently lost his spot in the Indian squad for the 2018 Baku World Cup, restored his form.
Anant Jeet Singh Naruka and Ganemat Sekhon respectively won the men’s and women’s skeet trials at Delhi’s Karni Singh Shooting Range.
Former world number one Divyansh was in outstanding form when competing at the MP State Shooting Academy Range in Bhopal, with a score of 636.3 in the men’s 10m air rifle T4 (fourth trial) qualifying round.
Sheng Lihao of China fired a world-record 635.4 during qualifying for the gold at the Bhopal International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup last month.
That says a lot that the Jaipur shooter outperformed it by nearly a point. In addition to qualifying, he also won the 25-shot ranking round. He then defeated Surya Pratap Singh Banshtu 16-12 to win the gold medal.
Punjab’s Sift Kaur Samra, who won the bronze medal in the women’s T4 50m rifle event at the Bhopal World Cup, defeated her statemate and Olympian Anjum Moudgil by a score of 16-4 to claim the title.
Third place went to Tejaswini Sawant, another seasoned Olympian competing.
An additional victory for Punjab came in the men’s 25m rapid fire pistol, when Indian international Vijayveer Sidhu scored 30 points to defeat Adarsh Singh 30-24 in the gold match. Vijay Kumar, an Olympic silver medalist, came in third with 17.
Abhinav Shaw of West Bengal won the junior men’s 10m air rifle, Nikita Kundu of Haryana won the junior women’s 3P event, and Rajkanwar Singh Sandhu won the junior men’s 25m rapid fire competition.
IN NEW DELHI, ANANT JEET AND GANEMAT WIN
Anant Jeet Singh Naruka of Rajasthan, a skilled skeet shooter now, won the men’s skeet trials at the DKSSR with 39 hits in the championship round. Gurjoat Singh Khangura, the overnight leader from Punjab, came in second with 37 hits, followed by Olympian Angad Bajwa in third place with 17 hits.
The three had also advanced to the semifinals in the same sequence, with Anant Jeet and Gurjota finishing 1-2 after clocking 123 hits out of 125, with the former winning the shoot-off to decide ranks (2-1). Angad qualified with a score of 119.
Ganemat easily won the women’s skeet, establishing herself as India’s top competitor in the discipline. She shot 118 in qualifying to place second behind Parinaaz Dhaliwal, who shot 119 to win. Parinaaz Dhaliwal went on to win the semifinal with 29 hits and the championship match with 37 hits.
Darshna Rathore of Rajasthan, who finished in second place, behind her by a whole five hits and had 32.
