World cup final: Standing tall

For the second successive day, the hosts could win just a solitary medal as most of the shooters melted during crucial moments at the ISSF World Cup Finals.

While Akhil Sheoran saved the blushes with a bronze medal in the 50 metres rifle 3 positions competition, both Rhythm Sangwan and Simpranpreet Kaur Brar faltered in the 25m sports pistol event when there was a chance to make it to the podium.

Sheoran, who has also won a bronze medal at the World Championships, clinched his first ever World Cup Final medal after totalling 452.6 points. The gold medal was won by Hungary’s Istvan Peni, who scored 465.3, while the silver medal went to Czech Republic’s Jiri Privratsky, who finished with a total of 464.2 points. India’s Chain Singh finished seventh after scoring 409.3 points.

Sheoran was outside the medal placing after prone and kneeling but roared back into contention in the standing position and jumped from the mid-table to a podium spot.

I had been training rigorously for the Final. Initially, I wasn’t getting good scores in the kneeling position but I knew I could do much better in prone and standing, my strong positions. My series in kneeling position went very well and in standing position I got the confidence that I would end up with a medal.

In fact, Sheoran and Chain were lying in the sixth and seventh spots, respectively, at the end of the first 15 kneeling position shots in the 45-shot final. However, once the kneeling shots were completed with Chain bowing out, the fight for the bronze medal was between Sheoran, Privratsky, Liu Yukun, the reigning Olympics champion from China, and Kostantin Malinovskiy.

Malinovskiy faltered after registering 9.2 and Liu fell behind Sheoran by 0.2 of a point after the Indian shot a 10.7 followed by a score of 10.4. With his next shot, which was the 43rd, he bagged the bronze.

Rhythm, Simranpreet falter

In the women’s 25m sports pistol competition, both Rhythm and Simranpreet came very close to winning a medal but exited the final after floundering in the shoot-offs.

Simranpreet did well to beat the elimination by registering five hits but failed to cash in on the momentum after failing to get the better of Germany’s Josefin Eder and Doreen Vennekamp in the shoot-off to stay in contention.

Rhythm was tied for the top position with Eder, France’s Camille Jedrzejewski and China’s Feng Sixuan till the seventh series but then slid into a three-way shoot-off after the eighth series, eventually finishing fourth. Josefin won the gold medal, edging Doreen 36 hits to 35, while Feng finished third with 31 hits.