Indian pair of Harmehar Singh Lally and Sanjana Sood on Wednesday won a silver medal in the skeet mixed team event on day four of the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Championship Juniors in Changwon, Korea.
Harmehar and Sanjana had to endure a gruelling 52-shot shoot-off, which they won 26-24 eventually, enroute to the final, where they lost 38-43 to Italian duo of Andrea Galardini and Sara Bongini.
China extended the gap with India at the top of the medal standings by picking up two more gold medals on day four of the event. India have so far won four gold, four silver and three bronze medals in the championship.
Harmehard and Sanjana had shot a combined 140 out of 150 in qualification, but found themselves tied for second place with Americans Benjamin Keller and Jessi Griffin. The Italians had topped the 16-team field with a score of 141.
A shoot-off was then undertaken to determine who would meet the Italian in the final and the Indian and the American pair demonstrated amazing grit and skill to not miss a single target for the first 48-shots. As the Indians nailed their 25th and 26th double, the Americans finally missed. However, they did win the bronze.
In the Gold medal match, the Indians faced hiccups from the start, missing five of their first 16-targets to the Italian’s two. Overall, both Harmehar and Sanjana missed five of their 24-targets each in the final, whereas the Italians missed five overall to coast to victory.
In the men’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions (3P) event, Sartaj Singh Tiwana did grab the final eighth qualifying spot with a tally of 584, but finished fourth eventually to miss out on a medal. Sartaj was 0.5 ahead of his Chinese opponent Ye Yishun before the 43rd of the 45-shot final, but an 8.9 to Ye’s 10.2, meant that he fell short by 0.8. Romain Aufrere of France won gold, his second of the championship.
Among the other Indians in Men’s 3P, Shivam Dabas shot 580 for a 15th place finish, Parikshit Singh Brar 579 for the 20th spot, Ramanya Tomer 576 for 27th, Harsh Singla 571 for 41st and Vedant Waghmare shot 571 to finish in 45thposition overall.
In the women’s 25m Pistol as well, Payal Khatri was the only Indian to make it to the final with a score of 578. She too finished fourth with 22-hits as China’s Zuo Qingyi won gold with 34-hits to her name. Hosts Korea and USA were second and third respectively.
Among the other Indians Simranpreet Kaur Brar (574) was 15th, Naamya Kapoor (571) 20th, Divyanshi (571) 21st and Meghna Sadula (570) finished 22nd. Tejaswini shot 563 to finish 29th.
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