Indian women’s and men’s air rifle teams reach medal rounds

NEW DELHI, May 30:  The Indian women’s and men’s 10m air rifle teams reached the medal rounds of their respective events in the ISSF World Cup in Baku, Azerbaijan on Monday.

The women did one better than their male counterparts, making it to the gold medal match against Denmark on Tuesday. The men’s team will take on Croatia on the same day, for a shot at bronze.

Former world number one Elavenil Valarivan, Ramita and Shreya Agrawal, first topped the qualification stage one of the women’s 10m air rifle team event with a combined effort of 944.4 across 90 shots. A total of 17 teams competed.

Then, they came second in stage two behind Denmark, to make the title round. The trio shot 628.6 to Denmark’s 629.2 after all three team members attempted 20 shots each.

In the men’s 10m air rifle team competition, the Indian trio of Rudrankksh Balasaheb Patil, Dhanush Srikanth and Paarth Makhija finished third in qualification stage two to make it to the bronze medal match.

They finished second to Austria in stage one to make the top eight stage out of 14 teams.

Earlier, in the 10m air rifle mixed team event, both the pairing of Shreya and Rudrankksh and Elavenil and Paarth, could not make much headway. The former finished 14th in qualification with a score of 625.6, while the latter shot 623.5 for a 24th place finish.

India has fielded a 12-member rifle only squad in the combined World Cup.  (PTI)