Indian shooters end Junior World Cup at 2nd spot

Gabala (Azerbaijan): Indian shooters took bronze in the men’s team Trap event on the final day of the ISSF Junior World Cup here on Thursday.

Lakshaya and Kismat Chopra along with Manavaditya Singh Rathore finished third in the men’s Trap event when they shot a team total of 347 points out of a possible 375.

Italy notched 360 to win gold in the event while Australia finished a point ahead of India to claim silver.

Rathore qualified for the individual bronze medal match-up in the event, being part of two shoot-offs in the lead up, but had to be content with the fourth place eventually.

Earlier, both Manavaditya and Lakshaya were at the tied fifth place with two other shooters on a score of 118 at the end of the qualifying round of 125 shots each.

Only six shooters qualify for the final rounds. In the ensuing shoot-off, Manavaditya and Chinese shooter Chengjiang Liu were on target with their first two shots and qualified.

Lakshaya missed his second and the other Kazakh shooter, Nikolay Belskiy, missed his first, to be placed seventh and eighth respectively.

India thus ended their campaign with a total of 24 medals to be placed second in the overall standings. The Indian tally includes nine gold, five silver and 10 bronze medals.

Russia topped the medal standings with 12 Golds for the total of 25 medals. A total of 18 countries won medals at the competition.

The ISSF bandwagon now moves to Italy, where the Senior World Cup Finals — the season ending competition of the year’s best shooters in every discipline — are scheduled early next month.

India will have three shooters — Jitu Rai, Mairaj Ahmad Khan and Sanjeev Rajput — participating in the event.

IANS