Raj Chaudhary of the Army outclassed Lajja Gauswami, the World Cup silver medallist, by 8.4 points to the gold in the women’s sports rifle 3-position event in the 13th Kumar Surendra Singh memorial shooting championship here on Sunday.
It was an impressive fare from the 27-year-old Raj Chaudhary who had qualified in the fourth place with a total of 577, to Lajja’s 585.
Raj, who had also won the rifle prone gold earlier, said that she owed her success to her husband, Maj. Pankaj Kumar Mishra, and the Commmanding Officer Col. Jaiveer Saran, as they made her believe in her ability.
“My rifle was irreparably broken during the pre-event training two days back, and I borrowed the rifle of Aman Walia for the competition, and that makes this gold doubly sweet,’’ said Raj.
In the men’s free rifle 3-position event, Sanjeev Rajput of Navy beat Army’s Imran Hasan Khan by 1.5 points, in the energy sapping 45-shot final that features the kneeling, prone and standing sections, like the qualifying event.
Rajput qualified at the top with a total of 1163 but looked to have conserved his energy for the climax after competition had started two hours behind schedule as the targets had to be dried following heavy rain on Saturday.
The gold medallist in the prone event, R. Abemo Kikon finished fifth, while the air rifle gold medallist Ravi Kumar finshed seventh. In the 25-metre centre fire pistol event, Gurpreet Singh beat Vijay Kumar by four points.
The results: Men: 50m Free rifle 3-position: 1. Sanjeev Rajput 452.9 (1163); 2. Imran Hasan Khan 450.4 (1144); 3. Satyendra Singh 432.4 (1152).
Juniors: 1. Navdeep Singh Rathore 1138; 2. R. Andrew Kom 1124; 3. Aadesh K. Chetty 1115.
25m centre fire pistol: 1. Gurpreet Singh 585; 2. Vijay Kumar 581; 3. Pemba Tamang 580; Juniors: 1. Manpreet Singh 560; 2. Sunil Gurung 546; 3. ishwajeet Singh 543.
Women: 50m sports rifle 3-position: 1. Raj Chaudhary 457.2 (577); 2. Lajja
Gauswami 448.8 (585); 3. Tejaswini Muley 437.7 (583); Juniors: 1. Elizabeth Susan Koshy 577; 2. Anjum Moudgil 573; 3. Priyal Nabendra Keni 563.
