New Delhi: Women’s 50m rifle 3-positions (3P) specialist Sift Kaur Samra won a bronze medal on the concluding day of the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup Rifle/Pistol in Munich, as India ended the competition with two medals. Sarabjot Singh had won gold in the Men’s 10m Air Pistol on Thursday.
Sift shot 452.9, to give up silver by an agonizing 0.1 to China’s Han Jiayu, the reigning Air Rifle Women’s World Champion. World No. 1 Seonaid Mcintosh of Great Britain won gold with a score of 466.7. As yet another classy field took to the shooting lanes at the Munich Olympic Shooting range, a fault in Danish Olympian Ibsen Rekke Maeng’s electronic target system resulted in a slight delay in finishing the Kneeling position of the women’s 3P final. While Seonaid had already taken a good lead at the end of it, Sift was down at seventh.
As the Briton powered ahead after the second Prone position, ahead by almost three from second-placed Chinese Zhang Qiongyue at that stage, Sift clawed up to fifth with an above-average round. A brilliant second five-shot series in the last Standing position then brought her up to the joint bronze medal position tied with China’s Han Jiayu, the reigning world champion in women’s 10m Air Rifle.
Sift was now in her element and after the 43rd shot of the 45-shot final, she had climbed up to second but eventually had to settle for bronze by the narrowest of margins. The Men’s 3P final had no less quality as experienced Serbian and two-time Olympian Milutin Stefanovic, top rifle-shooter Istvan Peni of Hungary, world-record holder Yukun Liu of China, the in-form Jiri Privratsky of the Czechia and world championship bronze medallist Jon-Hermann Hegg of Norway, all lined-up among others.
The gold in the end went to the second Norwegian in the field, Ole Martin Halvorsen (464.3) who beat Peni by 0.2 in an up-and-down final. Hegg took bronze with 449.9. India’s Aishwary Tomar never really recovered from a slow start to the final and was the first to exit the final in eighth place with a score of 408.9 after 40 shots. He was fourth after the first Kneeling position, before going down to eighth after Prone and then an 8.9 for his 39th shot and ninth in Standing, really came at the wrong time.
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