Haryana’s Anish Bhanwala clinches silver in 25m rapid fire pistol at World Championships

India’s Anish Bhanwala endured two nerve-wracking shoot-offs in a high-quality 25m rapid-fire pistol final to clinch the biggest medal of his shooting career, a silver at the ISSF World Championships (Pistol/Rifle) here on Sunday.

The 23-year-old Haryana marksman more than made up for his 2024 Paris Olympics disappointment with a steady performance that saw him first survive a shoot-off for the third place, and then ward off the challenge from Ukraine’s Maksym Horodynets to win the silver medal with a score of 28 in a competition that tested the resolve of all the six finalists.

The Sonepat shooter looked determined on Sunday as he first qualified for the finals in second place with a brilliant 585.

After shooting 291 in Stage 1 of the qualification on Saturday, he came back determined to notch up 294 in Stage 2 on Sunday and make it to the first pistol final of the World Championships.

Frenchman Clement Bessaguet, who won the gold tallying 31 points, topped the qualification with a score of 589.

In the final, Anish, for whom Cairo is a happy hunting ground having won the World Championships mixed team silver in 2022 besides a few World Cup medals, was in the ‘zone’ as he shot a perfect five in the opening series.

The Indian, who finished 13^th at the Paris Games, was placed second after the first three series of five shots each with a score of 16, while China’s Ni Zhixin was the leader with 17 points.

He carried the tempo into the elimination round by shooting two consecutive 4s to be tied with three others on 20 points.

But he faltered in the third elimination round, missing three targets to total 22 and fall back, even as Clement started emerging as a clear leader with a score of 25.

Anish then survived a shoot-off for the fourth place with Germany’s Emanuel Mueller and overcame another shoot-off with bronze-medal winner, Ukraine’s Maksym Horodynets, to go into the final series to shoot for the gold medal, which was eventually won by Frenchman Clement.

Anish’s achievement in the event is only second to Vijay Kumar’s silver-medal feat at the 2012 London Olympics.

The other Indians in the fray, Adarsh Singh (575 – 285+290) and Sameer (571 – 286+285) finished 22^nd and 35^th respectively.

The Indian team, comprising Anish, Adarsh and Sameer, finished fifth aggregating a score of 1731.

“It is difficult to explain in words but the feeling is completely unreal,” said Anish in the post-match interview to ISSF.

“I have tried a lot of times before; my preparation has been good but I could not deliver when it came to the competition. This time I was better prepared in my training and things worked out in my favour,” added Anish, who has also booked his place for the World Cup Final, which will be held in Doha next month.

Earlier in the day, the Air Rifle mixed teams could not qualify for the medal matches as the pair of Arjun Babuta and Elavenil Valarivan finished in eighth with a combined score of 632.3, 1.6 points less than the fourth-place pair.

The second pair of Rudrankksh Patil and Shreya Agrawal finished in 21^st with a score of 628.8.