Pune: Saurabh Chaudhary fell short by 0.9 on Friday, but the Uttar Pradesh teenage pistol ace was not to be denied on Saturday. Shooting the finals of the Men’s 10m Air Pistol national shooting trials T7, the Youth Olympics and Asian Games champion looked in a league of his own, beating a talented field with ease, but more importantly his winning score of 246.8 beating his own finals world record score of 246.3 by a huge 0.5 points.
Although, this will not be counted as official in the global scheme of things, Saurabh’s effortless performances over the course of two days—he won the T6 trials of the same event on Friday—of national trials was heartening to watch.
World championship silver medalist Anjum Moudgil was the other class act of the day as she triumphed in the Women’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions T6 trials with relative ease as well.
The Punjab girl shot 456 to win the finals after topping qualification with a 1170, which was a clear five points more than second placed Sunidhi Chauhan of Madhya Pradesh who was second in qualifying with 1165.
In the finals, Kajal Saini of Haryana came second with 451.7 and the seasoned Lajja Gauswami of Gujarat was third with 441. In the Men’s 10m Air T7 finals, Air Force’s Shahzar Rizvi, a former world record holder, was second behind Saurabh with 243.7 while the Army’s Ravinder Kumar was third with 220.3.
Saurabh had earlier also topped the qualifying round with a sublime 587. The Army’s Vikas Dhama was second with 581 while all other six finalists shot scores of 580.
Other winners included Prasiddhi (M.P- Women’s 3P junior T6), Arjun Singh Cheema (Punjab- Men’s 10M Air Pistol junior) and Udhayveer Sidhu (Chandigarh- Men’s 25M Standard Pistol).
