Asian Shooting Championship
New Delhi, Feb 10: India’s Aakriti Dahiya and Anjum Moudgil won the silver and bronze medal respectively in the women’s 50m rifle 3 positions event at the Asian Shooting Championship here on Tuesday.
Kazakhstan shooter Sofiya Shulzhenko set a new world record in the same event enroute winning gold at the Karni Singh Range.
Sofiya ended the 35-shot final with a score of 358.2, a whole four points clear of silver winning Aakriti. Aakriti’s senior teammate Anjum, a world championship medallist, clinched bronze with a score of 340.4. Sofiya’s score also gave her three more records – world junior, Asian and Asian junior.
Later in the junior women’s 3P final, India’s Prachi Gaikwad emerged triumphant with a score of 353.3. 14-year-old Kazakh shooter Tomiris Amanova won silver with 351.4 while Anushka Thokur bagged another bronze for the hosts.
Prachi, Anushka and Hazel also won the team gold in the event with a tally of 1748, seven clear of team Kazakhstan.
In the senior women’s 3P, the Kazak shooters turned the tables on the Indians by four points, to win gold with a combined score of 1760.
Paris Olympian and bronze medallist in the Buenos Aires World Cup last year, 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 shot 587 to take second spot while Ashi Chouksey was fourth with 586. Aakriti took the sixth qualifying spot with a total of 583 while the winner Shulzhenko shot 587 to take third spot behind Anjum.
In the final, the three Indians were on top after the first kneeling position with Aakriti in the lead, but Shulzhenko had a strong display in the second prone position to rise up to second. Thereafter, she was the only shooter to log above 50 points in both the five-shot series of the standing position, to take a decisive lead, which kept stretching till the end as her challengers faded out.
Also on the day, Adarsh Singh of India took pole position after the first precision round in the 25m rapid-fire pistol men’s competition, with a score of 291/300.
Favourite Anish Bhanwala shot 287 to remain in contention for a finals berth.
India with 39 gold, 15 silver and 12 bronze medals comfortably leads the medal standings. (PTI)
