National Shooting Championships: Manu Bhaker, Anish Bhanwala sweep gold medals in senior and junior categories

Bhopal: Commonwealth Games champions Manu Bhaker and Anish Bhanwala swept the senior and junior gold medals in the women’s 10m air pistol and men’s 25m rapid fire pistol events at the National Shooting Championships here on Tuesday. The 17-year-old Bhaker, representing Haryana, clinched four gold medals (individual and team events in senior and junior) on Tuesday to add to her two won earlier in the competition and also equalled the qualification national record en-route a facile victory. [caption id=“attachment_6145601” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Manu Bhaker. Shantanu Srivastava/Firstpost[/caption] Her state-mate Anish, also 17, won both the individual and team gold medals in the senior and junior men’s categories of his event to stamp his dominance. Bhaker, who has also won India one of its 15 Tokyo Olympics quota berths, shot 588 to top qualifications and equal the record set by Annu Raj Singh in the South Asian Games. She then shot a 243 to emerge triumphant in the eight-woman final. Devanshi Dhama was way back with 237.8 and another Tokyo quota winner Yashaswini Singh Deswal won bronze with 217.7. Bhanwala shot 28 in the rapid fire final to leave behind Bhavesh Shekhawat of Rajasthan who ended with 26 while Chandigarh’s Vijayveer Sidhu came third with 22 hits. Bhanwala had also topped the qualifying with a score of 582.