India bag 17 medals to win Asian Air Gun Championship

Caption Heena Sidhu and Shweta Singh produced a fabulous performance on Wednesday

India secured the 8^th Asian Air Gun Championship in style by winning 17 medals, and finishing on top with 1157 points. Former world number one Heena Sidhu won the gold and Shweta Singh bagged the silver in the women’s 10 m air pistol category in the Karni Singh ranges.

At the beginning, Shweta was ahead of Sidhu by 0.1 points till the 18^th shot. However, in her 19^th shot, she hit 8.9 while Sidhu hit a 10.5 to cruise ahead. Her miscalculation damaged her chances for the gold and even though she hit 10.0 compared to Sidhu’s 9.2 in the next round, she couldn’t recover from her eight-pointer.

She lagged by 0.8 in the end and finished with 197.0 while Sidhu top scored with 197.8.

Korea’s Kim Seon (175.8) won the bronze and Yashaswini Deswal, another Indian finished fourth (155.3). Sri Lanka (1098) and Hong Kong (1094) walked away with the team silver and bronze medals respectively.

The Indian contingent consisting of Heena Sidhu, Shweta Singh and Yashaswini Deswal performed exceptionally well in the tournament. Sidhu and Deswal had identical scores of 387 and Singh scored 383, before they progressed to the finals.

Their scores enable them to participate in international championships. The trio will head over to Kuwait in November to play in the Asian Championship, which is the last qualifying event before Rio Olympics.

In the junior women’s category, Nivetha Shri Paramanantham, Gauri Sheoran and Shreya Gawande walked away with the top prizes, respectively. However, the fact that there were only four competitors took away some of the sheen from the victory.

In the youth women’s final, India’s Harshada Nithave won the individual bronze (174.8) while she combined with Malaika Goel and Nayani Bhardwaj to claim the team gold in the event. Iran’s Haniyeh Rostamiyan (195.6) won the individual gold and Laya Mohammadi (195.4) came second with just 0.2 points behind. Iran won the team silver and Chinese Taipei took the bronze.

India finished the tournament with six gold, five silver and six bronze. Iran took home 12 medals (6 gold, 5 silver, 1 bronze) and Tajikistan with five medals (1 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze).