Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar earned India’s 13th quota place for next year’s Olympic Games.
Doha, November 10
Teenager Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar bagged India’s 13th Olympics quota in shooting with a bronze in the men’s 50m rifle 3 positions at the 14th Asian Championship here today, giving the country its best-ever quota haul. India had 11 shooters at the 2012 London Olympics and 12 in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
The 18-year-old Tomar shot 449.1 in the eight-man final to finish third on the podium behind gold medallist Kim Jonghyun (459.9) of Korea and Chinese Zhonghao Zhao (459.1) at the Lusail Shooting Complex. Tomar had sailed through to the final with a 1168 in the 120-shot qualifying. There were three quotas on offer in the event.
In July, the teenager from Ratanpur village in Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone district had shot down the men’s rifle 3 positions junior world record on his way to winning gold in the ISSF Junior World Cup in Suhl, Germany. His show helped India top the medals tally in the event.
Tomar is the second Indian, after veteran Sanjeev Rajput, to have got a quota place in the 3P event. He is a part of the junior team trained by Suma Shirur. Hailing from an agricultural family, Tomar was first spotted during a camp in Bhopal in 2015.
Rising through ranks
This is Tomar’s first stint at the senior level, having broken through following a string of strong performances in juniors, most notable among them being the junior ISSF World Cup gold with a junior world record.
He carried on that form, winning at the junior level in Asia and then beating the likes of Sanjeev Rajput in domestic competitions to stake a claim for selection in the senior team.
It was a top quality final field with a Chinese world No. 3 and a Korean world No. 9, besides the experienced Yuri Yurkov of Kazakhstan and the in-form Mahyar Sedaghat of Iran. Enjoying a good run of form, Tomar had 151.7 after the first 15 kneeling position shots, 156.3 after the same number of shots in the prone position, before finishing with 449.1 to claim bronze. Tomar also won the team bronze in the event, combining with Chain Singh (1155) and Parul Kumar (1154). — PTI
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