The Indian men’s skeet won the gold medal while the
10m air pistol mixed team bagged the silver medal at the Asian Shooting
Championships 2023 in Korea on Wednesday.
The Indian men’s skeet team, comprising Asian Games
2023 silver medallist Anant Jeet Singh Naruka, Gurjoat Khangura and Angad Vir
Singh Bajwa, struck gold with their combined total of 358.
South Korea settled for silver with 357 while
Kazakhstan claimed bronze with a total of 355. However, all three Indian
shooters drew blank in individual events.
The Asian Shooting Championships 2023 is a qualifying
event for the Paris 2024 Olympics. A total of 24 Olympic quotas are on offer
with the top two finishers (one per country) in each of the 12 Olympic shooting
events securing a spot for their national teams.
Anant Jeet Singh Naruka missed out on a medal and an
Olympic quota after finishing fourth in the final. The Indian shooter was
eliminated after scoring 33 of 40 shots in the six-man final.
Qatar’s Rashid Saleh Al-Athba went on to win the gold
medal after scoring 53/60 and was followed by South Korea’s Minshu Kim, who
shot 51/60. Chinese Taipei’s Meng Yuan Lee won bronze with a score of 42/50.
Gurjoat Khangura also made it to the men’s skeet final
but was first to crash out after missing five of the first 20 shots. He was
third in the qualifying round after shooting 121 from five rounds.
Anant Jeet Singh Naruka finished seventh in the
qualifying round with a score of 119 but made it to the six-man final as South
Korea’s Jongjun Lee, who finished fourth, competed for ranking points only
(RPO).
Angad Vir Singh Bajwa was ninth with 118 while Vikram
Karn Singh competed under RPO to score 107 and finish 40th.
Meanwhile, Sarabjot Singh and Surbhi Rao won the
silver medal in the 10m air pistol mixed team event. Sarabjot Singh won the
individual bronze medal on Tuesday in the men’s 10m air pistol and also secured
India’s first Paris Olympics quota in the pistol events.
Sarabjot Singh and Surbhi Rao lost 16-4 to the
People’s Republic of China’s Jinyao Liu and Xue Li in the gold medal match and
settled for silver.
In the qualifying round, the Indian pair finished
third with Sarabjot Singh (293-10x) and Surbhi Rao (288-10x) shooting a
combined total of 581-20x while Jinyao Liu and Xue Li finished on top with
581-22x. China’s Ranxin Jiang and Bowen Zhang came second after scoring
581-21x.
Usually, the top two teams from the qualifying round
make the cut for the gold medal match but since only one team per country could
qualify for medal matches, Ranxin Jiang and Bowen Zhang bowed out.
The Republic of Korea beat Pakistan 17-13 in the first
bronze medal match while Vietnam defeated Iran 16-14 for the second bronze
medal.
India’s tally in the senior Asian Shooting
Championships currently includes one gold, one silver and one bronze.
Ganemat Sekhon was the best-placed Indian in the
women’s skeet at 15th, scoring 108. She was followed by Kartiki Singh and
Parinaaz Dhaliwal on the 17th and 18th, respectively. Darshna Rathore was 19th
after shooting 106 in the field consisting of 28 shooters.
Agencies
