Reigning Asian Games gold medallist Sift Kaur Samra cinched her second consecutive women’s 50m rifle 3-positions title, getting the better of senior Punjab state-mate Anjum Moudgil in the National Shooting Championship on Wednesday.
Ganemat Sekhon and Anantjeet Singh Naruka, arguably India’s number one women’s and men’s skeet shooters at present, added another feather to their cap by winning maiden individual senior national titles at the Karni Singh Ranges.
Sift shot 465.7 in the final to clinch gold, pushing Anjum (463.8) to second spot. Ashi Chouksey of Madhya Pradesh came third with a score of 452.
Anjum took the lead after the first 15 ‘kneeling’ positions shots, but Sift overtook her after the 15 ‘prone’ shots and never looked back.
Whatever hopes Anjum had of overhauling Sift in the final, evaporated with a poor 9.8 on her 43rd shot.
Sift and Anjum also earned the team gold for Punjab.
Earlier, young Haryana shooter Nischal created a new qualifications national record with a score of 595. That effort helped her top the round with Sift taking second place with a score of 593. Ashi was third with 590, while Anjum bagged the eighth and final qualifying spot with a score of 587.
In Skeet, Punjab’s Ganemat and Rajasthan’s Anantjeet took contrasting paths towards the same result.
Ganemat shot a below-par 116 in qualification and had to come through a five-way shoot-off for four final qualifying places, before shooting down 56 targets to win the 60-shot women’s final.
Qualifiers leader Zahra Deesawala was second with 55 hits while Sanjana Sood was third with 44.
In men’s skeet, Anantjeet shot at a different level, registering a pillar to post victory.
He topped the qualifiers with a 123 out of 125. The next best in the field was 121.
In the six-man final, he gunned down 58 out of 60 targets to leave silver-winning Munek Battula well behind on 55. Bhavtegh Gill won bronze hitting 45 out of the first 50 targets.
Earlier this year, Ganemat won two medals including a gold and silver in ISSF World Cups while Anantjeet won an Asian Games silver in men’s skeet at Hangzhou.
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