India’s Divyansh Singh Panwar and Elavenil Valarivan won gold in the 10m air rifle mixed team event, while Manu Bhaker and Saurabh Chaudhary added another 10m air pistol mixed tam gold at the ISSF World Cup in New Delhi on Monday.
Both Chaudhary and Bhaker had earlier won a silver each in the men’s and women’s 10m air pistol event respectively. Yashaswini Deswal followed up her gold medal in the women’s 10m air pistol event with a bronze in the 10m air pistol mixed team event with Abhishek Verma, who had earlier won bronze in the men’s 10m air pistol event.
India are currently top of the medal table with five golds, three silvers and four bronzes.
This is Valarivan’s first medal in the mixed team event at a World Cup. She has previously won two golds in the women’s 10m air rifle event at World Cups. On the other hand, this is Panwar’s fifth mixed team medal and eighth medal overall at World Cups. Panwar had won three golds and a bronze in the 10m air rifle mixed team category in 2019. Panwar and Valarivan finished on top of the table with a score of 421.3 points in the second qualification round to make it to the gold medal match.
They had finished third in the first qualification round with a score of 628. Panwar and Valarivan defeated Hungary’s Istvan Peni and Eszter Denes 16-10 in the final.
The Indians shot a 10.4 each in the final shot to secure the top prize, while the Hungarian pair got 10.7 and 9.9 at the Karni Singh Shooting Range.
Deswal and Verma beat Turkey’s Sevval Ilayda Tarhan and Ismail Keles 17-13 in the bronze medal match. The Indian duo had earlier finished third in the first and second round of qualification after scoring 577 and 382 respectively.
This is Deswal and Verma’s second medal as a pair. They had previously won silver at the Rio de Janeiro World Cup in 2019.
Panwar had previously won bronze in the men’s 10m air rifle event at this edition of the World Cup.
In the final, the four shooters take one shot each in the duration of 50 seconds in each series, after which the higher-scoring team earns two points. The team that scores 16 points first wins.
