Indian shooters shine at Commonwealth meet

The Indian contingent continued their good performance in the ongoing Commonwealth Shooting Championship here on Wednesday with gold medals in the mens 10 metre Air Pistol and womens 10m Air Rifle events.

Youngster Shahzar Rizvi won the men's 10m Air Pistol beating established compatriots Omkar Singh and Jitu Rai who took silver and bronze respectively to complete an Indian clean sweep in the event.

In the women's 10m Air Rifle, Pooja Ghatkar came out triumphant over teammate Anjum Moudgil who took silver. A third Indian in the final, Meghana Sajjanar, finished fifth.

India's overall tally has now gone up to three gold, two silver and two bronze for a total of seven medals from the competition so far.

The day started with Shahzar topping the 16-man qualification round with a score of 581. Omkar and Jitu followed him into the eight-man final with scores of 576 and 571 respectively.

The order did not change in the final, although Jitu led the trio briefly after the first series of five shots with Omkar second and Shahzar in third.

Omkar then led till the 18th shot before the youngster took control from the 20th shot. By the end of the allotted 24 shots, Shahzar ended with a score of 240.7, while Omkar came second with 236, thanks to four out of his last six shots being in the 8s. Jitu won Bronze with a score of 214.1.

In the women's 10m Air Rifle, the fight was a bit tougher. Singapore's star Rifle shooter, Jasmine Xer, topped qualification with a score of 419.8 and her teammate, the talented teenager Martina Veloso shot 417.5 to finish second.

Jasmine's was a Commonwealth qualification record. Meghana with 416.6, Pooja with 415.3 and Anjum with 414.1 qualified in third, fourth and sixth positions respectively.

In the eight-woman final however, it was Anjum who started the strongest, leading the field after five shots. But Pooja soon showed her class, to take the lead after 10 shots and held on to win with a final score of 249.8.

Anjum ended with 248.7 to win Silver while Matina Veloso of Singapore won Bronze with a score of 224.8. Meghana ended fifth with 183.8

In the men's Skeet, the Indian trio of Mairaj Ahmad Khan, Angad Vir Singh Bajwa and Sheeraz Sheikh shot 119 each out of 125 in qualification to get into a shoot-off to qualify for the finals. Mairaj and Angad made it through to the six-man final to eventually finish fifth and sixth respectively.

--IANS

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