CHENNAI: Indian shooters continue to make headlines. After the duo of Anjum Moudgil and Apurvi Chandela secured Olympic quotas for India on Monday, it was pistol shooter Om Prakash Mitharval who showed his marksmanship to gun down a gold medal in the men’s 50m pistol at the ongoing ISSF World Championship in Changwon, South Korea, on Tuesday.
But unlike Anjum and Apurvi, he won’t be getting a quota as the event that he participated in is not part of the Olympics. Nevertheless, the golden return is a confidence booster for the 23-year-old ahead of the 10m air pistol event (an event which has quotas at stake) that will be held on Thursday.
It was the first gold in ISSF competitions for Om Prakash who had won two bronze medals at the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, earlier this year. Former silver medallist (Granada) Jitu Rai finished 17th. While Om Prakash had a fruitful day, it was a tough lesson for highly-rated Manu Bhaker and former World No 1 Heena Sidhu. Competing in the 10m air pistol event, the duo could not get past the qualifiers. Manu finished 13th while Heena finished 29th. In Manu’s case, it was not that she was way off target. In the last few events, she has an average hit of 574 in qualifiers.
A score which had seen her enter the final and win gold (Guadalajara World Cup and CWG). She garnered 574 on Tuesday but was outdone by the competition. Ditto for Heena, who shot 571. A score that was enough for her to qualify in the recently-concluded Asian Games, where she went on to win a bronze medal. Rio Olympics bronze medallist Anna Korakaki of Greece reigned supreme ahead of Serbia’s Zorana Arunovic and Bomi Kim, who finished second and third respectively.
Despite the miss, they will get a second chance in the 25m pistol event that is due to be held on Friday and Saturday. The ongoing championship is the first qualifying event for the 2020 Olympics. Meanwhile, Asian Games gold medallist Saurabh Chaudhary teamed up with Abhidnya Ashok Patil to clinch a bronze medal in the 10m air pistol mixed team junior event. Anmol Jain and Devanshi Rana had to settle for fifth spot.