Shooting Nationals: New names win 25m RFP, 50m 3P and Men’s Skeet events


Shooting Nationals: New names win 25m RFP, 50m 3P and Men’s Skeet events

Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range 1

The previous day’s trend of having new faces emerge as National Champions over established names continued at the Shooting Nationals as each of the winners of the Men’s 25m Rapid Fire Pistol, Men’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions and Men’s Skeet competitions were shooters rarely seen on the international circuit.

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The 64th National Shooting Championships organised by the NRAI are being simultaneously held at New Delhi (Pistol), Bhopal (Rifle) and Patiala (Shotgun).

Men’s 25m Rapid Fire Pistol

Bhavesh Shekhavat of Rajasthan was the Men’s 25m RFP National Champion ahead of finalists such as Gurpreet Singh, Anish Bhanwala, Vijay Kumar and Vijayveer Sidhu.

Bhavesh hit a score of 33 to win the finals. Rio 2016 Olympian Gurpreet Singh representing Army was 2nd with 29. Anish was 3rd.

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2012 Olympic silver medalist Vijay Kumar, on a comeback to the sport, was eliminated 4th while one of the top national shooters in this event, Vijayveer, finished 5th.

Anish topped qualifications with 581 while the cut-off was 576. Bhavesh qualified 4th with 579-16x. None of the shooters could breach the Tokyo 2020 finals cut-off of 582. This was a stark contrast to yesterday’s Men’s 10m AP qualification where 25 shooters exceeded the Tokyo qualification mark of 578-21x.

Haryana’s Anish also won the 25m RFP Junior event with a new finals National Record of 34 hits. Adarsh Singh also of Haryana was 2nd with a score of 30 while Punjab’s Vijayveer was 3rd.

Punjab (Vijayveer and Udhayveer Sidhu, Rajkanwar Singh Sandhu) won the team title with a combined score of 1724. Haryana (Anish, Adarsh, Harpreet Singh) were 2nd with 1721 while Army Marksmanship Unit (Gurpreet, Neeraj Kumar, Gurmeet) were 3rd with 1719.

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Men’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions

Navy’s Kiran Ankush Jadhav defeated overwhelming favourite Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar to clinch the National Title in Men’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions.

Kiran (455.7) won on the basis of an excellent standing series that got him ahead of leader and eventual 2nd place finisher Niraj Kumar (455.3) also of Navy. MP’s Aishwary had to be content with 3rd place after fighting off the challenge from Chain Singh in the standing round.

Aishwary however did comfortably win the junior event with a score of 459.6 ahead of fellow MP shooter Avinash Yadav’s 455.2. Surya Prata Singh Banshtu of Himachal was 3rd.

Aishwary hit a new NSCC record of 1183-71x in qualifications. This score would have placed him 2nd at Tokyo 2020. None of the other shooters could score above the Olympic cut off of 1176. Kiran qualified 4th with 1172 while Niraj was 8th with 1166-61x.

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This was another good performance from Aishwary after he won the Junior World title with new JWRs earlier this year.

The team title was won by MP (Aishwary, Goldi Gurjar, Harshit Binjwa) with a combined score of 3516. Navy (Kiran, Niraj, G. Purusothaman) were 2nd with 3495 and Haryana (Sanjeev Rajput, Gurman Singh, Nishant Dalal) were 3rd with 3494.

Men’s Skeet

Women’s Skeet saw a new National Champion in Darshna Rathore and the same scenario was repeated in Men’s Skeet.

Rajveer Singh Gill of Punjab won the competition with a score of 56. Anantjeet Singh Naruka of Rajasthan was 2nd with 52 while 2-time Olympian Mairaj Ahmad Khan of UP was 3rd.

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Anantjeet topped qualifications with 121. Rajveer (119) had qualified in 6th place after a shoot-off.

Rajveer also won the junior title with a score of 55 ahead of Abhay Singh Sekhon’s 53. Munek Battula was 3rd.

Punjab (Gurjoat Singh, Karam Sukhbir Singh, Abhay) won the team title with a score of 345. UP (Mairaj, Karn Vikram Singh, Haris Ul islam) were 2nd with 344. Telangana (Munek, Shreyan Kapoor, E. Chetan Reddy) were 3rd with 338.

25m Pistol Men Junior

Vijayveer Sidhu did win a title at the Shooting Nationals via the non-Olympic Men’s 25m Pistol Junior event. He scored 587, a point ahead of brother Udhayveer’s 586. Shiva Narwal, who had won the 10m AP Junior and Youth titles yesterday finished 3rd here with 582. No finals were held.

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