Shooting World Cup: Sarabjot shoots gold as India start in style
The 21-year-old Sarabjot Singh blanks Azerbaijan's Ruslan Lunev 16-0 in the gold medal match; compatriot Varun Tomar takes bronze
Sarabjot Singh got India's campaign at the Bhopal Shooting World Cup to a flying start with a clinical performance to win the 10m air pistol event on Wednesday. The 21-year-old two-time defending national champion, in his first full season as an international senior, blanked Azerbaijan's Ruslan Lunev 16-0 in the gold medal match while young Varun Tomar finished third.
Sarabjot set the pace early, topping the 60-shot qualification round among 24 contenders with a score of 585. Reigning world champion Liu Jinyao was next with 584 while Switzerland's Jason Solari shot 583 to finish third. Tomar was seventh among the eight shooters who made it to the ranking round. Vladimir Svechinko (Uzbekistan, 582), Frederik Larsen (Denmark, 580), Zhang Jie (China, 580), and Ruslan Lunev (Azerbaijan, 579) completed the list.
Sumit Raman, the third Indian in the field, shot 577 to finish 10th among medal contenders.
Sarabjot carried his form into the next round, consistently finding inner 10s to lead the field with 253.2 points. Lunev (251.9) was the second best even as Tomar made up for an indifferent qualification round with a much better performance, becoming only the third man in the field to shoot 250 or more.
At one stage, the gold medal match appeared to be headed towards an all-Indian affair but Lunev made up for a poor third series —where he managed only two 10s — with much-improved last two series, finding 10s in seven of the ten attempts. Tomar eventually paid for a bad first series in which he shot three 9s, but his score of 250.3 was enough to win him his second World Cup bronze. Last month in Cairo, Tomar, 19, had beaten Sarabjot in the bronze medal playoff after the two were tied at 250.6 points in the ranking round.
The gold medal match turned out to be a completely one-sided affair with Sarabjot, egged on by a noisy crowd, stamping his authority on his much-experienced opponent. The Azerbaijan shooter, winner of two ISF Grand Prix events this year, was no match for the Indian who calmly shot one 10 after another before capping off the day with a perfect 10.9.
Under the new ISSF rules, in the gold medal match, the winner of each shot is awarded 2 points and the first to 16 points wins. Sarabjot's series of 10.7, 10.1, 10.4, 10.3, 10.2, 10.2, and 10.9 was a clear winner to Lunev's sequence of 9.3, 9.1, 10.1,10.1, 9.6,95,8.9, and 10.4.
There was no such luck for the hosts in the women's field where Manu Bhaker, Rhythm Sangwan, and Divya TS returned empty-handed.
Sangwan and Bhaker shot 572 and 568 respectively to finish 13th and 16th in the qualifying stage while Divya went into the next round with the second-highest score (579) behind China's eventual champion Li Xue (581). The 23-year-old Chinese, a gold medallist at last year's Cairo World Championships (team women) topped the next round too with a score of 254.6. She moved into the gold medal match with Germany's Doreen Vennekamp who scored 252.6, beating her 17-5 in the final.
China's reigning world champion Kaiman Lu was fourth while the third spot went to compatriot Wei Qian who shot 250.2. Divya, the lone Indian in the ranking round, finished fifth.
Day 2 of the competition will feature mixed team events in the 10m air rifle and 10m air pistol categories.
