Elavenil Valarivan, Hriday Hazarika top respective categories in 10m air rifle national selection trials

Reigning world number one Elavenil Valarivan and Assam’s Hriday Hazarika emerged winners in the women’s and men’s 10m air rifle T1 national selection trials respectively at the Dr Karni Singh Shooting range on Saturday. Gujarat’s Elavenil shot 628.3 after the 60-shot qualification round to enter the final in fourth place. Rajasthan’s Nisha Kanwar top-scored with 631.8 as she led a strong eight-woman field into the finals. The world number one turned out too strong in the final, beating senior shooter and Olympian Ayonika Paul of the Railways comfortably. Elavenil finished with 251.7, two points ahead of second placed Ayonika, while Shriyanka Sadangi of Odhisa finished third. In the men’s event, Hazarika delivered a start to finish performance in the final, beating Madhya Pradesh’s Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, a Tokyo 2020 quota holder, 253.2 to 251.5. Punjab’s Arjun Babuta, who had topped qualifying earlier with a score of 629.6, finished third with 230.0. Two-time Olympian Sanjeev Rajput, who had won the T1 50M Rifle 3 Position trials earlier, finished fourth. The day also saw the commencement of the men’s and women’s T2 skeet shooting trials. Zahara Deesawala and Aayush Rudraraju were leading the women’s and men’s qualification fields respectively. The finals are slated for Sunday.