Young Simranpreet Kaur Brar overcame a challenging field to win the women’s 25m pistol gold, while men’s 50m rifle 3-position exponent Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar bagged a silver on ISSF World Cup Final debut on Sunday, completing a full set of medals at all possible world and continental championships in the sport.
Simranpreet, whose father left his Government job to support his daughter, did her parents proud with the biggest achievement of her career by shooting a superb 41 in the final, equalling the World junior record in the process. The other Indian to qualify for the eight-shooter final, Esha Singh, finished seventh. Double Olympic bronze medallist Manu Bhaker could not make the final after finishing ninth in the qualification round with a score of 581.
In the qualification round, 21-year-old Simranpreet, who had won a silver at the World Cup in Lima earlier this year, shot 585, while Esha tallied 585 to finish fifth and fourth, respectively and make the final. Simranpreet began slowly, missing three targets in the first series of five shots to slip to eighth and last position.
But she rallied thereafter and fired three perfect 5s in the competition to jump to the China’s ace shooter and reigning 10m air pistol world champion Yao Qianxun, who finished a distant second with 36 points, and former world champion Doreen Vennekamp of Germany, who took the bronze.
In men’s 50m rifle 3-positions, Aishwary finished 0.9 points behind Czechia’s Jiri Privratsky, who shot 414.2 in the final played in the new ISSF format of 40 shots. Olympic champion Liu Yukun won bronze. Aishwary, who is a double Olympian, former junior world champion, and reigning Asian champion, has also won a silver medal in the World Championship last month.
Aishwary shot 595 in qualification to finish second behind China’s Tian Jiaming, who blazed the Lusail shooting ranges with a world record 598. Athlete of the Year Jon-Hermann Hegg of Norway and Hungarian ace Istvan Peni were the other top guns in the top eight, which again saw three Chinese go through.
Aishwary was fourth with a score of 102.8 after the 10 shots in the first kneeling position, shot over two series of five shots each. The next 10 shots of the second prone position are where Aishwary found his momentum and climbed up to second on the leaderboard with a strong series of 52.9 and 52, respectively.
Privratsky, meanwhile, was charting a course of his own, 3.3 ahead of Aishwary at the stage. Olympic champion Liu was third with 20 standing position shots still to be played. Aishwary then outgunned Privratsky over the next 10 shots to bring the difference down to 1.5. After the 31st, it went down to 0.5 as Privratsky was finding it difficult to get into the 10-ring.
Peni and Tian were first to exit the final as Aishwary went into the lead after the 33rd shot. The young Frenchman Romain Aufrere then lost the battle for bronze with the Olympic champion, as Privratsky caught up with Aishwary and went 0.5 ahead again after the 37th shot with a couple of high 10s, as the Indian faltered a bit.
The gap was, however, a mere 0.3 ahead of the final two shots, and Aishwary fired a 10.1 to the Czech’s 10.3 and then a 10.6 for his 40th, putting Privratsky decisively ahead to land gold, his third ISSF yellow metal of the year.
Aishwary, too, ended the year on a strong note after a barren first half. It was also India’s fourth medal of the event in Doha. Sift Kaur Samra in the women’s 3P shot 584 in her relay to finish 10th and failed to qualify for the final. Aishwary Tomar wins 3P silver Simranpreet Kaur Brar (centre).
