Shooting World Cup: Chandigarh’s Anjum wins silver
Young Indian shooters continued to hog the limelight in the ISSF World Cup at Guadalajara, Mexico, with Anjum Moudgil, 20, of Chandigarh bagging silver in Silver in women’s 50m rifle 3-positions, an event that has been dominated by the Europeans.
IN QUALIFICATION, ANJUM CAME UP WITH A SOLID PERFORMANCE IN THE PRONE ROUND, SCORING 399 OUT OF 400 TO LOG A COMBINED TOTAL OF 1170.
NEWDELHI: Young Indian shooters continued to hog the limelight in the ISSF World Cup at Guadalajara, Mexico with 20-year-old Anjum Moudgil bagging silver in Silver in women’s 50m rifle 3-positions, an event that has been dominated by the Europeans.
On a day when swirling winds at the range made life tough for shooters in the finals, Anjum, who is a sub-inspector in Punjab Police, shot brilliantly to finish just 1.2 points behind China’s Ruijiao Pei. While Pei notched 455.4, the Indian had a score of 454.2 after the 45-shot final. China’s Ting Sun claimed bronze, finishing way behind with a score of 442.2.
This was India’s eighth medal in the competition and the first silver after three gold and four bronze medals. Anjum remained in medal contention from the start of the final and at the end of the 15-shot kneeling position, she stood third behind Ruijiao and Slovakia’s Ziva Dvorsak.
She pulled ahead after the second five-shot prone position series, which followed the kneeling position and was 0.9 points clear of German world No 1 Jolyn Beer at the end of it. After the 15-shot prone series, she was still the leader but after the 10th shot of the last standing series, when the first two finalists out of the eight were eliminated, Anjum dropped to fourth. However, a superb 10.8 on the 41st shot took her to second and she maintained that position, finishing with scores of 10.2, 10.1, 9.5 and 10.2 to secure a deserving silver.
In qualification, Anjum came up with a solid performance in the prone round, scoring 399 out of 400 to log a combined total of 1170 and sail through to the eightwoman final in second place behind Ruijiao Pei who shot a qualification world record score of 1178. The other Indian, Gaayathri was well in contention for a finals place after the kneeling and prone rounds but a 371/400 in standing meant she had to be content with a 15th-place finish totaling 1153. Former prone world champion Tejaswini Sawant also shot the same score but finished a spot behind Gaayathri because of three fewer inner 10s.
In men’s 25m rapid fire pistol, 15-year old Anish Bhanwala faced disappointment. He stood third after the first precision round with a solid 294 and had a realistic chance of making it to the top-six finalists. However after looking comfortable in the second rapid fire round, beginning with a solid 99 and following up with a 97 in the final series of five shots pulled him down to seventh place.