Olympian shooter Elavenil Valarivan shot 253.6 in the final of the women’s 10m air rifle event at the Asian Shooting Championships on Friday to clinch the gold medal.
The 26-year-old clinch the Asian title for the second time after winning it for the first time in 2019 in Taiwan.
The silver went to China’s Xinlu Peng with a score of 253, while Korea’s Eunji Kwon (231.2) took home the bronze. Another Indian in the final, Mehuli Ghosh finished fourth with a score 208.9 in the eight shooter final.
Valarivan started well in the final placed joint second after the first two series. In the first elimination series, she took the lead with scores of 10.7 and 10.6 and maintained it till the end to clinch the title. She was very consistent with her scores shooting above 10.5 regularly and never shot below 10 with 10.0 being her lowest score.
The Korean shooter Eunji was on tail of Valarivan for most of the final but she faltered on her last shot scoring 9.9 and finishing with the bronze medal.
Mehuli started at the top in the final shooting 53.1 in the first round but a 9.8 shot in the second round pushed her to the fifth spot and she couldn’t recover from the blow eventually finishing out of top three.
Earlier in the qualification, the Indian shooters dominated with four Indian shooters finishing in the top 15. Valarivan had qualified eighth for the final with a score of 630.7. Ghosh had originally finished 10th in the event with a score of 630.3 but made the final as two other higher-placed Indians — Arya Borse (633.2) and Sonam Maskar (630.5) — stepped aside since they were competing only for ranking points.
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India also clinched the bronze medal as the team with qualification scores of Valarivan, Mehuli and Ananya Naidu totalling to 1891 finishing behind China (1902) and Korea (1897.5).
This is second senior gold medal for India in this edition of the continental championships as Anantjeet Singh Naruka won gold in the men’s skeet yesterday. Earlier, Double Olympic medallist Manu Bhaker had won the bronze medal in the women’s 10m air pistol competition.
Juniors continue to dominate
The trio of Shambhavi Shravan, Hrudya Shri Kondur and Isha Anil won the gold medal in the team gold in the women’s junior 10m air rifle competition with a combined total of 1896.2, which is a junior world and Asian record.
The teams from China and South Korea bagged the silver and bronze respectively.
