ISSF Junior World Championships: Manu Bhaker, Naamya Kapoor and Rhythm win 25m Pistol team gold

Lima: The Indian women’s team of Manu Bhaker, Rhythm Sangwan and Naamya Kapoor struck gold in the 25m pistol event to continue the country’s domination at the ongoing International Shooting Sport Federation’s (ISSF) Junior World Championship. The Indian team beat USA 16-4 in the gold medal match. The country’s 20th medal came in the men’s trap team event in which the Indians secured a silver, going down to Italy 4-6. The trio of Bakhtyaruddin Malek, Shardul Vihan and Vivaan Kapoor had qualified for the match after being placed second out of seven teams in qualification, with a combined score of 473 out of 525.

Gold! 🥇 The crack women’s sport pistol team of @realmanubhaker #rhythmsangwan & #naamyakapoor win the Junior Women’s 25M Pistol at the @issf_official #juniorworldchampionship @WeAreTeamIndia 🇮🇳🇮🇳 pic.twitter.com/0s2rEvo1Li

— NRAI (@OfficialNRAI) October 6, 2021

Italy was strong throughout the competition having topped qualification with a huge 486. Earlier, Bhaker secured her fourth gold of the competition to go with one bronze, while it was the 14-year-old Kapoor’s second gold of the championship. She had become the newly-crowned world junior champion in the individual 25m pistol event. India also picked up a silver medal in the men’s 25m rapid fire pistol event when Adarsh Singh lost to USA’s Henry Turner Leverett in the six-man final. At the end of day eight of the championship on Wednesday, India topped the medal tally with nine gold, seven silver and three bronze. USA were second with five gold and a total of 16 medals. The troika of Manu, Rhythm and Naamya, faced little competition throughout as they took a commanding lead of 10-4 before the beginning of the eighth series of rapid-fire shots and then closed out at 16-4. On Tuesday, they had finished on top of round one qualification with a combined effort of 878, which was six points clear of the second placed French team. Later that day, they topped round two as well to ease into the gold medal match with a score of 446. USA joined them in the final with a score of 437. In the men’s 25m rapid fire, India had three finalists out of six with the twins Udhayveer and Vijayveer Sidhu making it through along with Adarsh Singh. Udhayveer was the best Indian in qualification with a score of 577 and finished fourth, while Adarsh was fifth with 574 and Vijayveer took the sixth and final qualification spot with 572. Udhayveer and Vijayveer were the first to go out in the final. Udhayveer got nine hits in the first 20-shots to finish sixth. Vijayveer finished fifth, going out in the next series with 13 hits out of 25. Adarsh, however, started the final on a strong note with a perfect 10 out of 10 in the first two series. However, USA’s Henry Turner Leverett turned out to be the most accurate in this match and finished with 32 hits out of 40 to win gold, while Adarsh finished with 28 to win silver. In the 50m rifle prone mixed team event, India finished outside the medal bracket. The pair of Sift Kaur Samra and Surya Pratap Singh made it to the second qualification round, eventually finishing sixth with a combined score of 409.5. Ashi Chouksey and Sanskar Havelia finished ninth out 11 pairs in round one of qualification with a combined score of 604.0. The first eight pairs made it to round two. The junior women’s trap team missed out on a medal when Kirti Gupta, Aadya Tripathi and Divya Singh went down 2-6 to Germany in the bronze medal match. India will begin Thursday on top of the medals tally with nine gold, eight silver and three bronze medals already in their kitty. The USA are second with six gold, eight silver and five bronze medals.