Mumbai, Feb 11:
The world record set by Heena Sidhu-Pandit, who became the first Indian pistol shooter to bag an ISSF-World Cup Finals gold last November, has been ratified by the world shooting body.
Heena shot a score of 384 in the preliminaries and a high tally of 203.8 in the final round in that event.
The ISSF, which had made major changes in the rules to make the sport spectator-friendly, have considered them to be positive and should be continued with and consequently the scores by Heena, then considered provisional, have now been officially accepted as a record, said a media release issued by the Maharashtra Rifle Association today.
To add to this historic first by an Indian shooter, Heena has climbed a place in the world rankings and is now second on the list.
The performance has also brought the shooter on the cover-page of the ISSF news magazine, yet another first for Indian shooting.
Heena had shot her way to glory by defeating three top ranked shooters in the world — Guo Wenjun (China), who had won two consecutive Olympic gold medals in Beijing (2008) and London (2012), defending champion Arunova Zorana (Serbia), and Olene Kosteyvech (Ukraine), a gold and bronze medallist at the Athens (2004) and London (2012) Olympic Games.
This trio finished behind Heena who, after a slightly hesitant start, went on to shoot 15 consecutive bulls eye.
This enabled the Indian a win by 5.2 points, perhaps the biggest margin of victory at this level of competition. (PTI)
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