Mehuli wins national trials

NEW DELHI: Mehuli Ghosh proved herself in a strong field that had world’s top three shooters competing in women’s 10m air rifle at the national selection trials at the Karni Singh shooting range here on Wednesday.

World No1 Apurvi Chandela, No 2 Anjum Moudgil and No 3 Elavenil Valarivan, who won gold at the Rio World Cup, were all competing in the seventh national selection trials. All three along with Mehuli made the cut for the eight-shooter final setting up a thrilling finale.

Commonwealth Games and Youth Olympics silver medallist Mehuli showed nerves of steel as she won the trials with a score of 251.9. Gujarat’s Elavenil, who earlier topped the qualification with 631.1, came in second (251.0). Madhya Pradesh’s Shreya Agrawal was third with 228.3. Anjum finished fourth and Apurvi sixth in the finals. Both have booked the two 2020 Tokyo Olympics quota places from the event, that goes to the country.

Bengal’s Mehuli also won the junior trials with an even better score of 252.7, beating Shreya (252) and Aakriti Dahiya (229.4). It was for the second consecutive day that Mehuli swept both senior and junior trials (T6 and T7) in women’s 10m air rifle showing great consistency. Zeena Khitta of Himachal (251.1 ) won the youth women’s 10m air rifle trial beating Atmika Gupta (248.8).

In men’s 50M rifle 3 positions, Akhil Sheoran of the Railways finished on top with a final round score of 455.5. Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar came second with 455.0 while Army’s Satyendra Singh came third with 443.5. Aishwary, however, won the junior men’s trial in the same event.

Arpit Goel won the trials in men’s 25M rapid fire pistol with a score of 30, beating Harshwardhan Yadav, who shot 28. Udhayveer Sidhu came third with a score of 25.