Olympian Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar extended India’s domination in the shooting World Cup in Cairo by winning the 50m rifle 3-position gold on Wednesday. It was the fourth gold for India in the World Cup, following the men’s air rifle gold by Rundrankksh Patil, apart from the two mixed air pistol and mixed air rifle gold medals.
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In the gold medal match, Aishwary beat Alexander Schmirl of Austria 16-6, after the latter had topped the second stage with 407.9. Aishwary himself had narrowly made the gold medal match, by placing 0.3 point higher than Andreas Thum of Austria.
It was the third World Cup gold for the 22-year-old Aishwary, who had won one each in the last two years, in Delhi and Changwon, Korea. “I had not performed well twice earlier at this range. So I was determined to back with a medal,” said Aishwary.
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Aishwary (588) and Akhil Sheoran (587) had placed on top in qualification, but the latter finished seventh in the ranking round.
Olympic quota winner Swapnil Kusale was not at his best and placed 35th with 580.
In men’s 25-metre rapid fire pistol event, Anish Bhanwala shot 294 out of 300 in the first stage, the third best score behind Cho Yeongjae (296) of Korea and Florian Peter (295) of Germany.
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The second stage followed by the medal round will be staged on Thursday.
India was on top of medals table with four gold and two bronze, followed by Hungary with two gold and a silver.
The results: 50m rifle 3-position: 1. Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar 16 (406.4) 588; 2. Alexander Schmirl (Aut) 6 (407.9) 587; 3. Andreas Thum (Aut) 406.1 (586); 4. Jiri Privratsky (Cze) 405.1 (586); 7. Akhil Sheoran 304.3 (587); 35. Swapnil Kusale 580; RPO: Pankaj Mukheja 581; Harshit Binjwa 577.