Heena Sidhu overcame selection pressure to shoot her way to the No. 1 spot in women’s air pistol in the fifth set of trials held at the Dr. Karni Singh shooting range, Tughlakabad, on Thursday.
With the race hotting up for the Asian Games and the World Championship, the 18th Kumar Surendra Singh championship took the back seat.
Despite not being consistent, Heena pipped Harveen Srao by 0.6 points after both had qualified with 576.
Heena, who had won the World Cup Final gold in 2013 with a world record, had a 3.4 point lead over Harveen after 20 shots.
But the margin shrunk dramatically after she struggled with her last four shots.
“It has been a long season and I am happy that Heena has been able to step it up yesterday [Wednesday] and today [Thursday] to get back to the top,” said husband and coach Ronak Pandit.
The results:
Men: 50m rifle prone: 1. Akhil Sheoran 620.1; 2. Arun Sharma 619.8; 3. Chain Singh 619.1.
Junior men: 1. Niraj Kumar 618.1; 2. Pruthviraj Ayachi 615.7; 3. Ron George Valiyaveetil 615.4.
Women: 50m rifle prone: 1. Sonika 618.0; 2. Chahat Deep Kaur 617.1; 3. Shreya Saksena 616.8.
Junior women: 1. Bhakti Bhaskar Khamkar 609.4; 2. Ayushi Podder 606.7; 3. Shirin Godara 605.5.
Trial-5: 50m free pistol: Men: 1. Manjit 558; 2. Anmol Jain 557; 3. Jitu Rai 556.
Junior men: 1. Anmol Jain 557; 2. Shaurya Sarin 543; 3. Sagar Singh Bedi 540.
10m air pistol: Women: 1. Heena Sidhu 240.9 (576); 2. Harveen Srao 240.3 (576); 3. Rahi Sarnobat 217.7 (574).
Junior women: 1. Abhidnya Patil 237.8 (573); 2. Anjali Choudhary 237.4 (568); 3. Priya Raghav 210.9 (567).
Youth women: 1. Aarju Vaishnav 241.4 (565); 2. Anjali Choudhary 238.1 (568); 3. Saumya Dhyani 216.4 (565).
