Matsuda shines at shooting World Cup

Two-time World Champion Tomayuki Matsuda of Japan claimed his first ever International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup Final (WCF) gold in the mens 10 metre Air Pistol event in a world record effort here on Thursday.

Tomayuki shot a sublime 241.8 to hold off the fast catching up Pavlo Korostylov of Ukraine, who finished with 241.1 in the 24 shot final to claim silver. Fellow Ukrainian Oleh Omelchuk took bronze with an effort of 218.8.

This was the mercurial Japanese Pistol shooter's eighth overall medal at the ISSF WCF. He had taken four silver medals and three bronze earlier before this first Gold apart from his two World Championship titles and fifteen World Cup stage medals of which seven were gold.

This was also his second gold in Delhi, having won the event here in the first World Cup stage held in February this year.

Earlier, both India's Jitu Rai in the men's 10m Air Pistol and Pooja Ghatkar in the women's 10m Air Rifle, missed qualifying for the final of their respective events when they both finished ninth in qualifying.

Only the top eight qualify for the final. Jitu shot 572 behind the eventual winner Tomayuki, who qualified eighth with a score of 573.

Pooja also faced similar heartbreak as her effort of 412.4 was 0.1 behind Norway's Malin Westerheim, who took the eighth and final qualifying spot with a score of 412.5 after 40 shots.

In the women's 10m Air Rifle, Serbia's Andrea Arsovic successfully defended the title she had won last year in Bologna, Italy, when she shot 251.3 in the final to get the better of Romania's Laura-Georgeta Coman, who finished with 249.7 to claim the silver. Xinyi Peng of China took the bronze.

In the men's Skeet, Italy's Riccardo Filippelli won gold beating Ben Llewellin of Britain 4-3 in a shoot-off. Both were tied at 59 out of the allotted 60 shots in the final.

Argentina's Federico Gil finished third to claim the bronze with a score of 49.

Thanks to Filippelli's effort, Italy shot to the top of the medals table given their two earlier silvers while China came down to second with one gold, one silver and four bronze medals.

India, with their solitary gold, are joint seventh with Spain and Japan, among 14 countries to have won medals so far.

--IANS

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