National Shooting C'ship: Elavenil Valarivan crowned women's air rifle champ

Teenager Elavenil Valarivan on Thursday showcased a superlative performance as she picked her first senior women's 10m Air Rifle National Championship title at the ongoing 61st National Shooting Championship.

Elavenil, who had last month shot a finals world record equalling score in the same event at the national selection trials, overcame a quality field at the National Games Shooting Range in Trivandrum, Kerala.

Meanwhile, Mehuli Ghosh, another talented teenager from West Bengal won a total of eight Gold medals on a single day.

Ghosh has returned just last week from Wako, Japan after winning gold in the women's 10m Air Rifle Youth event and securing a Youth Olympic Games quota in the process.

The eight finalists of the women's 10m Air Rifle event read like the who's who of women's rifle shooting in India with the presence of Rio Olympians Apurvi Chandela and Ayonika Paul, current India internationals Pooja Ghatkar and Anjum Moudgil apart from Mehuli among others.

But it was Elavenil, who despite a slow start took control of the final after the 16th shot of the 24-shot match, and closed out for the title with a score of 250.6, ahead of Apurvi Chandela of Rajasthan with 250.4. Mehuli settled for the Bronze with 228.7.

Elavenil also won the team gold in the event with the Gujarat team of Lajja Gauswami and Hema K.C besides herself, combining for a total of 1244.8, ahead of the Silver winning Maharashtra team by just 0.8 and a clear 1.8 ahead of the West Bengal team which won Bronze.

All the other finals of the day, dedicated to the women's 10m Air Rifle events were either won by Mehuli individually, or by the West Bengal team she was part of.

She won the Junior Women's, Women's Civilian and Junior Women's Civilian Championship golds by pushing back Elavenil to Silver in all three events.

She also won the women's Youth individual gold in the event, getting the better of Shreya Agrawal of Madhya Pradesh in the final with a new finals national record and team golds in all these four events with teammates Shreya Bandyopadhyay and Ayuishi Podder.

Day three of competitions has the men's Rapid Fire Pistol events lined up.

After the first day of qualification, Anish Bhanawal of Haryana was in pole position in the men's 25m Rapid Fire Pistol shooting 292 to stay ahead of Gurpreet Singh of the Army with 289.

A total of 4800 men and women shooters from across the country are participating in the 61st NSCC including 200 wild card entries.