ISSF World Cup 2017: China continues to dominate, India struggles on day three

With day three of competition, China maintained its domination at all the rifle and pistol events held so far at the ongoing International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup (rifle/pistol/shotgun) here.

Having won their fourth and fifth Gold medals of the tournament, China is now leading the medal tally comfortably with four Silvers added to their five Gold medals, while Italy with one Gold and two Silvers lie a distant second.

India lies in the fifth place with one Bronze medal along with seven other countries.

In the first medal event of the day, the Women's 10m air pistol, Indian fans had hopes with Olympian and former World No.1 Heena Sidhu, but she 'flattered to deceive', missing out on a final berth by 0.1 points to finish eleventh.

Harveen Srao, however, surprised many by scoring 379 in qualifying to make it to the eight-woman Final in seventh position.

She had a torrid start to the Final, shooting three scores out of the first five shots in the 8s which put her out of a medal reckoning.

China's reined the event by beating Olympic Champion and World No.1 Mengxue Zhang compatriot by Yuemei Lin to the Gold.

The Bronze went to Singapore's Shun Xie Teo.

In the Men's 50m rifle three positions, India's hope rested on the experienced Olympian Sanjeev Rajput, who rallied brilliantly towards the end to shoot a score of 1,159 to qualify for the Finals in eighth position.

Chain Singh finished ninth with a score of 1156 while the third Indian Satyendra Singh shot 1154 to finish 13th.

In the eight man Final, Sanjeev was in medal contention after the 15-shots each Kneeling and Prone positions but a below par Standing position round meant he had to be content with fifth place.

Out of the seven medal events held so far, a total of seven Indians have made it to six Finals, barring the Women's Trap, however Pooja Ghatkar's Bronze in the Women's 10m air rifle is the only medal won.

There was also the Trap Mixed Team event Final on the day. It can be noted that this is the first ISSF World Cup where Mixed Gender events are being tested out.

Of the six out of 14 teams that qualified for the Final round China beat New Zealand 25-21 in the Gold medal match.

The Bronze went to Italy who beat Team Spain 28-21.

Day four of the competition will also see two Medal events in the 50m rifle three positions Women and Men's Double Trap.

In the Women's event India will be represented by Tejaswini Sawant, Lajja Gauswami and N. Gaayathri, while in the Men's Double Trap, India will have hopes from Ankur Mittal, Sangram Dahiya and 14-year-old Shapath Bharadwaj.