New Delhi: Indian shooter Anjum Moudgil clinched a silver medal in the women’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions event at the ongoing ISSF World Cup in Guadalajara, Mexico.
It was Anjum’s first World Cup medal as she battled windy conditions to shoot 454.2 in the 45-shot final to finish behind former junior world champion China’s Ruijiao Pei (455.4). Another Chinese Ting Sun claimed bronze, finishing with a score of 442.2.
“It feels great to win my first World Cup medal, in my first final. I was focused and confident,” said Anjum, in a release issued by the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) here on Friday.
This was India’s eighth medal in the competition and the first silver after having won three golds and four bronze medals already, for their best ISSF World Cup performance by far.
India thus remained on top of the medals tally with eight medals, while China is in second with two gold, two silver, one bronze.
Anjum remained in medal contention from the beginning of the final and at the end of the 15-shot kneeling position stood third behind Ruijiao and Slovakia’s Ziva Dvorsak.
She pulled into the lead after the second 5-shot prone position series, which followed the kneeling position and was 0.9 points clear of German world number one Jolyn Beer at the end of it.
After the 15-shot prone series, Anjum was still in the lead. However, after the 10th shot of the last standing series when the first two finalists out of the eight were eliminated, Anjum had gone down to fourth position.
A brilliant 10.8 in the 41st shot took her up to second and she maintained that position finishing with scores of 10.2, 10.1, 9.5 and 10.2 to secure the first World Cup medal of her career.
Earlier in qualification, Anjum rode on the back of a solid prone round of 399 out of 400 to log a combined 1170 and sail through to the eight-woman final in second place behind Pei, who shot a qualification world record score of 1178.
Anjum, November last year had won two medals — a silver and a bronze — at the Commonwealth Shooting Championship in Brisbane.
In the 2016 South Asian Games in Guwahati, she had won a double gold and a junior bronze at the 2014 Asian Shooting Championship in Kuwait.