Aishwarya Pratap Singh Tomar came up with a classic double in the 50-metre rifle 3-position event in the 19th Kumar Surendra Singh shooting championship at the Dr. Karni Singh Range on Saturday.
The 18-year-old — coached by former world record holder and Olympic finalist Suma Shirur for the last two years — was not too pleased with the qualification score of 1160, but shot both the men’s and junior final with a touch of assurance to bag both gold medals.
Tomar shot 453.5 in the men’s final to beat Kailash Chand of Army by 0.7 point. Sanjeev Rajput, who topped qualification with 1165, finished fourth behind Ashish Gautam of Air Force.
Akhil Sheoran was fifth while other leading shooters like Gagan Narang, Deepak Kumar and Ravi Kumar placed sixth to eighth in that order.
In the junior final, Tomar won with 454.1 four points ahead of Harshit Binjwa.
“It was good in prone and standing positions, but the kneeling score was not good,” said Tomar. “I did not expect to win both gold medals. But, I had won all the three rifle gold medals for juniors in the national championship.”
Meanwhile, in the junior men’s sports pistol, World junior champion Vijayveer Sidhu pipped Adarsh Singh after both shot an identical 586. Vijay’s twin, Udhayveer, was third ahead of Rajkumar Singh Sandhu.
In women’s air rifle qualification, Mehuli Ghosh shot 631.3, 0.2 point ahead of Aayushi Gupta. Shakti Chandra, Shreya Agrawal, Ayonika Paul, Shriyanka Sadangi, Aditi Shula and Meenakshi were the others to make the women’s final, which will be held on Sunday morning.
Vinita Bhardwaj and Meghana Sajjanar missed the final by 0.1 and 0.4 point respectively.
The results: 50m rifle 3-position: Men: 1. Aishwarya Pratap Singh Tomar 453.5 (1160); 2. Kailash Chand 452.8 (1157); 3. Ashish Gautam 441.0 (1157).
Junior men: 1. Tomar 454.1 (1160); 2. Harshit Binjwa 450.1 (1140); 3. Surya Pratap Singh Banshtu 432.2 (1133).
25m sports pistol: Junior men: 1. Vijayveer Sidhu 586; 2. Adarsh Singh 586; 3. Udhayveer Sidhu 584.
