Young guns push gold count

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 22

The world No. 1 pair in the 10m air rifle mixed team event, Divyansh Singh Panwar and Elavenil Valarivan, showed why they are rated the best in the business. Still young — Elavenil is 21 and Divyansh only 18 — the duo held their nerve to beat the Hungarian pair of Eszter Denes and Istvan Peni 16-10 for gold.

The Hungarians gave India a big scare in the seesaw final, levelling the score twice — first 6-6 and 10-10. However, as they’ve done before, both Elavenil and Divyansh remained cool and composed to squat away the competition. Two-identical scores of 10.8 from the duo earned them the lead and the gold was won with identical scores of 10.4. This was a start to another medal run from the hosts as Indians won three out of the four gold medals on offer.

If Divyansh and Elavenil are rated highly, the 10m air pistol mixed pairing of Saurabh Chaudhary and Manu Bhaker carries an air of invincibility. After all, the teenaged pair had swept all the four available ISSF World Cup mixed gold medals in 2019.

However, today Saurabh and Manu had to earn this medal as they trailed 6-10 against the Iranian pair of Javad Foroughi and Golnoush Sebghatollahi. With Manu struggling to find a consistent grouping early on, the Indians were under pressure throughout. Even Saurabh took some time to hit his zone.

The pair recovered by the 10th series and never looked back to take their winning run to five mixed team competition gold in a row. The Indians won the match 16-13.

Yashaswini Singh Deswal and Abhishek Verma claimed the bronze after beating

Sevval Ilayda Tarhan and Ismail Keles 17-13.

Gold, silver in skeet

The skeet team of Gurjoat Singh Khangura, Mairaj Ahmad Khan and Angad Vir Singh Bajwa won the day’s third gold, in the skeet team final. They beat Qatar’s Nasser Al-Attiya, Ali Ahmed Al-Ishaq and Rashid Hamad 6-2.

In the women’s team final, Ganemat Singh Sekhon, Karttiki Singh Shaktawat and Parinaaz Dhaliwal went down 4-6 against Kazakhstan’s Zoya Kravchenko, Rinata Nassyrova and Olga Panarina.