Pune: India probably had their most memorable day at the ISSF World Cup stage, winning two of the three possible gold medals, an Olympic quota place and registering two World Records on Day 2 of Rifle/Pistol World Cup in Munich on Monday.
Saurabh Chaudhary set the ball rolling for India, winning his second Men’s 10m Air Pistol ISSF gold of the year, shattering both the senior and junior world records in the process. He also held both the existing records incidentally.
Then Rahi Sarnobat, struck her career’s second ISSF World Cup gold winning the Women’s 25m Pistol competition. This also helped India win their sixth Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games quota place in Shooting.
Saurabh’s mastery of the finals and dominance over silver medalist Russian Artem Chernousov, a world championship silver medalist last year, could be illustrated by the fact that even though the Russian had lesser scores in the 9s in the 24-shot final than the Indian, Saurabh beat him by close to 3 points in the eventual standings.
He finished with a superb 246.3 to Artem’s 243.8. Former Olympic champion Pang Wei of China shot 220.7 to win the bronze. Saurabh’s previous senior world record shot at Delhi was 245 and the junior world record was at 245.5. Shahzar Rizvi, the second Indian in the final finished 5th with a score of 177.6.
In the women’s final, Manu Bhaker made a solid start scoring five out of five hits in the first of 10 series of five shots each. Rahi started with three hits. After the sixth series, Manu, Rahi and Olena Kostevych of Ukraine were jointly tied at the top with a score of 21.
