Anant Jeet Singh Naruka: The Men’s Skeet team comprising Anant Jeet Singh Naruka, Gurjoat Khangura, and Angad Vir Singh Bajwa struck gold on Sunday when their combined total of 358 was enough to pip team Korea by a point at the 15th Asian Shooting Championship (ASC), going on in Changwon, Korea. Kazakhstan was third. The first two named also made the individual final, where Anant Jeet was fourth and Gurjoat sixth, thereby missing out on both the individual medals and the two available Paris Olympic quota places.
Sarabjot Singh and Surbhi Rao also won a silver for India on the day. They shot a combined 581 in qualification, the same score shot by four other teams including two Chinese pairs who took the top two positions by virtue of greater accuracy.
The Indians were third, but as only one team from a country could make the final, Sarabjot and Surbhi were drawn to play Li Xue and Liu Jinyao for gold. The Chinese prevailed 16-4 however and the Indians took home silver.
In the junior events India’s Shubham Bisla and Sainyam won bronze in the 10m Air Pistol Mixed Team competition, overcoming Kazakhstan’s Malika Seil and Kiril Tsukanov 16-10 in the first bronze medal match.
Anant Jeet, who recently won silver at the Hangzhou Asiad, shot 33 in the six-man Men’s Skeet final to finish fourth. Qatari Rashid Saleh Al-Athba won gold with 53 hits out of 60.
While he already had won a Paris quota in earlier competitions, second placed Kim Minsu of Korea and Chinese Taipei’s bronze winner Lee Meng Yuan, took the other two, as Anant Jeet fell short, shooting 33 out of the first 40 targets to bow out in fourth. Gurjoat had earlier become the first of the top six to bow out with 15 hits out of the first 20 targets.
Earlier in qualification, Gurjoat Khangura had shot two perfect rounds of 25 to log 121 and make it to the top six in third position. Anant Jeet had to take the shoot-off route with a qualification round score of 119.
He piped Kuwaiti legend Abdullah Alrashidi, whom he had gone down to famously in the Hangzhou final, to clinch the sixth and final qualifying spot. Angad Bajwa shot 118 to miss out, finishing in ninth position.
The women’s skeet shooters had a tough outing with Ganemat Sekhon finishing best among the four on show. She shot 108 to end 15th overall. Karttiki Singh Shaktawat and Parinaaz Dhaliwal shot 107 each to end in 17th and 18th positions while Darshna Rathore was 19th with a score of 106. Ganemat, Parinaaz, and Darshna also finished fourth in the team competition with an overall score of 321.
India now has six medals from the 15th ASC including two gold, two silver, and two bronze medals each. The squad has also won two Paris quotas from the championship so far.
