India’s Aakriti Dahiya and Anjum Moudgil secured silver and bronze medals respectively in the women’s 50m rifle 3 positions event at the Asian Shooting Championship on Tuesday. Kazakhstan’s Sofiya Shulzhenko set a new world record in the same event, winning gold at the Karni Singh Range.
Sofiya finished the 35-shot final with a score of 358.2, four points ahead of silver medallist Aakriti. Anjum, a world championship medallist, claimed bronze with a score of 340.4. Sofiya’s score also earned her three additional records: world junior, Asian, and Asian junior.
In the junior women’s 3P final, India’s Prachi Gaikwad emerged victorious with a score of 353.3. Fourteen-year-old Kazakh shooter Tomiris Amanova won silver with 351.4, while Anushka Thokur
secured another bronze for India with a score of 341.1 after the 34th shot.
Prachi, Anushka, and Hazel also won the team gold in the event with a total of 1748 points, seven points ahead of team Kazakhstan. In the senior women’s 3P, the Kazakh shooters turned the tables on the Indians, winning gold with a combined score of 1760, four points ahead.
Paris Olympian and bronze medallist at the Buenos Aires World Cup, Arina Malinovskaya, topped the women’s 3P qualification field with a score of 588 after 20 shots each in the kneeling, prone, and standing positions.
Anjum scored 587 to secure second place, while Ashi Chouksey was fourth with 586. Aakriti qualified sixth with a total of 583, and Shulzhenko shot 587 to take third place behind Anjum.
In the final, the three Indians led after the first kneeling position, with Aakriti in the lead. However, Shulzhenko’s strong performance in the second prone position moved her up to second place.
From there, she was the only shooter to score above 50 points in both five-shot series of the standing position, taking a decisive lead that continued to grow until the end as her challengers faded.
Additionally, Adarsh Singh of India took the lead in the 25m rapid-fire pistol men’s competition after the first precision round, scoring 291/300.
Favourite Anish Bhanwala shot 287 to stay in contention for a finals berth, while Neeraj Kumar’s 277 meant he would need to perform well on Wednesday to make the finals, which will follow the second rapid-fire round.
India’s medal tally currently stands at 39 gold, 15 silver, and 12 bronze medals, comfortably leading the standings.
(With Inputs From Agencies)
