Women rifle shooters Anjum Moudgil and Apurvi Chandela on Monday booked 2020 Olympic quota places for India as they finished second and fourth respectively in the 10m air rifle finals on the second day of the 52ndInternational Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Championship in Changwon, Korea.
A Quota place goes to a country, which later decides who will eventually compete at the Olympics Games.
Anjum’s silver was the icing on the cake as India won everything possible in the event- individual medal, a team medal and the maximum possible two quota places, with the combine of Anjum, Apurvi and Mehuli Ghosh also winning the silver in the team event.
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The Anjum-Apurvi duo had earlier qualified for the final in fourth and seventh places with respective scores of 628.7 points and 627.5 points. The top eight made it through in the 113-strong field. Prominent among them, the defending world champion Petra Zublasing of Italy.
Both Anjum and Apurvi started the final well and kept among the top four. By the 12th shot, the first of eliminations, Anjum was leading the field while Apurvi was in the fourth place. A 10.9 by Apurvi and a 10.7 by Anjum in the 15th shot meant that they were in third and second respectively till the 20th shot, when Apurvi bowed out in fourth.
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Anjum then fended off one home favourite Korean Eunhea Jung with a couple of high 10s on the 21stand 22ndshots, but could not fend off another and settled for silver after 24 shots with a score of 248.4. Hana IM won the gold for the host country with a score of 251.1.
The top four bagging the available Tokyo 2020 quotas meant that Korea and India exhausted their quotas from this event.
Manish Keer then gunned down the Silver in the Women’s Trap, going down in shoot-off to Italy’s Erica Sessa, after both were tied on 41 after 45 shots in the final. Manish had a chance to seal the deal with her 45thand final shot going in with a shot advantage but missed.
Earlier in the Men’s 10m Air Rifle, India’s Deepak Kumar, fresh from winning Silver at the Jakarta and Palembang Asian Games 2018, finished sixth to narrowly miss out on a medal and even a Tokyo 2020 quota place.
In a top 112-man qualification field, Deepak had shot an excellent 630.1 to make it to the eight-man final in fourth place. Deepak began the final well and was in third place till the 10thshot of the 24-shot final, however his 11thand 15thshots had returns of 9.3 and 9.6 respectively, which effectively took him out of contention.
India end day two with two gold, three silver and one bronze medal for a total of six which has placed them second in the medals tally behind China.
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In Other India Results of the Day
Men’s Trap (top six qualify for finals)
- Manavjit Singh Sandhu- finished 24thwith a score of 119 out of 125
- Zoravar Singh Sandhu- finished 28thwith a score of 118 out of 125
- Lakshay Sheoran- finished 35thwith a score of 118 out of 125
- 10th in Team event
Men’s 10m Air Rifle (top eight qualify for finals)
- Ravi Kumar- finished 28th with a score of 625.4
- Gagan Narang finished 42nd with a score of 622.9
- Team score of 1878.4 was short of Bronze by 0.1
Women’s Trap Junior (top six qualify for finals)
- Kirti Gupta finished 13th with a score of 108 out of 125
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- Soumya Gupta finished 29th with a score of 98 out of 125
- 4th in Team event
