Saurabh shoots gold at ISSF World Cup

New Delhi  :  Indian shooter Saurabh Chaudhary won gold in the men's 10 metre air pistol category at the ISSF World Cup, here on Sunday. In the final, the 16-year-old created a world record with a score of 245. He also ensured a quota place in this event for India at the 2020 Olympics.

This is the second gold for India in this tournament.

Apurvi Chandela had taken the first gold for India when she won the title in the women's 10m air rifle category.

Damir Mikec of Serbia took silver with 239.3 points while China's Pang Wei was a distant third with 215.2.

Damir secured the second available quota place for his country.

In the final, Saurabh had five scores in the 9s, but every time he would come back with a high 10 to ensure he never let go of the top score, which he had from the very first series of five shots.

Saurabh now has both the junior and senior world records to his name. He shot the junior record last year at the Changwon world championship. His score there of 245.5 is more than his senior world record score on Sunday.

However, there was disappointment for Indian fans in the women's 25m Pistol category as Manu Bhaker finished fifth to miss out on an Olympic quota. Bhaker had a poor start but recovered to take the second spot at one stage. But a series of poor shots towards the end saw her crash out of the medal contention.

In the Men's 50m Rifle 3 Positions qualification round, India's Sanjeev Rajput finished 25th with a score of 1,169 and Parul Kumar came in 22nd with a score of 1,170.

In the days other results, Hungary's young rifle sensation Istvan Peni won the Men's 50m Rifle 3 Positions event with a finals score of 459.1, overcoming Russian Sergey Kamenskiy by 0.1 points. Besides Peni, the second quota in the event, however, went to Marco Di Nicolo of Italy who won Bronze with a score of 444.5

Veronika Major of Hungary won gold in the event and China's Zhang Jingjing silver. The quotas also went to Hungary and China. Other Indians in fray in the event, Rahi Sarnobat and Chinki Yadav shot 580 each to finish 15thand 17th, respectively.