Jitu Rai and Heena Sidhu teamed up to clinch the gold medal in the 10m Air Pistol Mixed Team event of the ISSF World Cup Final on Tuesday, 24 October. This is India’s first medal at the event being hosted in New Delhi.
While Rai and Sidhu finished with 483.4 points, Fouquet and Goberville of France bagged silver with 481.1 points. Cai and Yang of the People’s Republic of China secured bronze with a score of 418.2.
In the second event of the day, Meghana Sajjanar and Deepak Kumar finished fourth in the 10M Mixed Team Air Rifle final.
This is the first time, apart from the 15 Rio Olympic disciplines, that three mixed team medal events are being held – 10M Air Pistol, 10M Air Rifle and Mixed Team Trap.
Rai, a Commonwealth and Asian Games gold-medallist, and Sidhu, also a former Commonwealth Games gold-winner, picked up their third gold together in the mixed team event. They won both the test events (Grand Prix status) at two earlier World Cup stages this year in New Delhi and Gabala.
This was Heena’s second WCF gold. She had won the individual Women’s 10M Air Pistol Gold in the 2013 edition. This was also Jitu’s second medal at the WCF level. He had won Silver last year in the individual Men’s 50M Pistol event.
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In the qualification round where each shooter had to shoot 40 shots across four 10-shot series, Heena and Jitu shot a total of 767 out of 800 to lead five teams into the Final. France (766), China (764), Ukraine (761) and Chinese Taipei (760) were the others to qualify.
In the final, where each team had to shoot 30 shots before the bottom placed team began successively eliminating themselves after the 34th (17th individual shot) shot and subsequently after every 4 shots per team.
Heena and Jitu started slowly, but a magnificent couple of 10.9s by Jitu on his 15th and 17th individual shot meant that they held on to win gold easily. A 10.8 in his 21st individual shot was also crucial as Heena was a picture of consistency throughout the final. They finished with a combined total of 483.4 after 48 shots.
China’s Song Buhan and Wu Mingyang won the Mixed Team 10M Air Rifle Gold shooting 499.8 at the end of the 48 shot final. Silver went to the Serbian pair of Milutin Stefanovic and Andrea Arsovic who shot a combined 496.8. China’s Team 2 won Bronze as Sui Gengcheng and Shi Mengyao shot 430.3 to leave the Indian pair of Deepak Kumar and Meghana Sajjanar to fourth place.
The Indian pair who suffered a two-shot penalty for shooting in the wrong sequence would have probably landed a medal otherwise.
In the Mixed Team Trap, Spain’s Antonio Bailon and Beatrice Martinez won Gold shooting 42 out of 50 in the final round. They beat back Italy’s Giovanni Pellielo ad Jessica Rossi to Silver. The Italian pair score 40 while USA’s Derrek Haldeman and Ashley Carroll won Bronze with a final round score of 31.
The ISSF World Cup Finals are an annual event, where the top performers from the year’s four World Cup editions compete for the big prize. A total of 162 athletes from 45 ISSF member federations will be competing in the tournament. There will be a total of 18 finals across six competition days (24-29 October).
Hosts India have a total of 10 competitors across three disciplines, including current World No 1 Ankur Mittal and reigning Asian Games champion and former world number one Jitu Rai.
(With inputs from PTI.)
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