Olympic silver medallist Vijay Kumar has been entered in the Minimum Qualifying Scores (MQS) section for the World Cup in rifle and pistol to be held in Changwon, Korea, from April 4 to 9.
Although Vijay Kumar had dominated the rapid fire pistol event, by winning the national title apart from topping the two trials, it was decided to field him in the MQS section, perhaps because there would be no quota places on offer this season, for the Olympics.
While Gurpreet Singh will be the other entry in the MQS section in rapid fire pistol, Pemba Tamang, Harpreet Singh and Mahedra Singh will figure in the main event.
Gagan Narang got selected to compete in the three rifle events — air rifle, prone and 3-position.
Olympian Sanjeev Rajput also got selected to compete in all the three rifle events, but had to settle for the MQS section in air rifle — in which he beat both Narang and Abhinav Bindra in one of the trials — and prone events. Olympian Heena Sidhu also got the nod.
The squad: Men: Pistol: Vijay Kumar, Prakash Nanjappa, Amit Kumar Pilaniya, Om Prakash, Amanpreet Singh, Gurpal Singh, Gurpreet Singh, Jitu Rai, Harpreet Singh, Mahendra Singh, Pemba Tamang.
Rifle: Gagan Narang, Abhinav Bindra, Sanjeev Rajput, Surendra Sinh Rathod, Akhil Sheoran, Chain Singh, Hariom Singh, Sushil Ghalay, Navdeep Singh Rathore.
Women: Pistol: Heena Sidhu, Annu Raj Singh, Sonia Rai, Rahi Sarnobat, Anisa Sayyed, Shreya Gawande, Malaika Goel, Sushma Singh.
Rifle: Pooja Ghatkar, Apurvi Chandela, Elizabeth Susan Koshy, Ayonika Paul, Meena Kumari, Anjum Moudgil, Tejaswini Sawant, Raj Chaudhary, Mampi Das, Lajja Gauswami.
Coaches: Kanwar Randhir Singh, Mohinder Lal, Gangadhar Sharma, Abha Dhillan, Daleep Singh Chandel, Pradeep Kumar Acharya.
