Kolkata: Team India continued it’s dominance as Jitu Rai and Heena Sindhu joined the list of medal winners at the 10th Asian Airgun Championships in Wako City, Japan on Sunday. The medal count has already reached 17 at the end of day three and looks well on the verge of increasing as the competition progress into the final day on Monday.
While both Jitu and Heena won individual bronze medal in the men’s and women’s 10m Air Pistol events respectively, Jitu clinched a gold in the team event along with teammates Shahzar Rizvi and Omkar Singh. Heena however had to settle for silver in the women’s team event. Shri Nivetha Paramantham and Harveen Srao were the other team members.
The junior men’s 10m Air Pistol also saw India add one more bronze and silver, to their medal tally, with Gaurav Rana, Anmol Jain and Abhishek Arya bagging a sliver in the team event, while Anmol clinched the bronze medal in the individual category.
The star of the day was however a 16-year-old Mehuli Ghosh, who exceeded all expectations to clinch the gold medal in the junior event and in the process became the first Indian women to seal a place for the 2018 Youth Olympic Games (YOG).
The Joydeep Karmakar protege, struck gold to bag one out of the three quota places up for grabs in the women’s 10m Air Rifle Youth Olympics, with a 250.5 score in the final, that secured the gold. Mingwei Gao of China her closest competitor faield by a 0.1 margin of points and had to settle for a silver medal.
The Indian youngster also clinched a team bronze medal with Rakshna Chakkaravarthy and Sreya Agarwal ending the final round with a combined score of 1240.5. China with a 1253.1 won the gold, while Korea settled for a silver with a team effort of 1241.2.