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Shambhavi Kshirsagar won the women’s 10m air rifle event at the Kumar Surendra Singh Memorial Shooting Championship.
Shooting (Representative Photo: X)
Maharashtra teenager Shambhavi Kshirsagar trumped world championship medallists, Olympic finalists and national champions on her way to winning the women’s 10m air rifle event at the Kumar Surendra Singh Memorial Shooting Championship here on Saturday.
The 16-year-old, who was fifth in the junior worlds in Lima last year, topped the qualifications with a score of 633.5, before closing with a brilliant 10.8 for her last shot of the 24-shot final, to outgun Haryana’s Ramita, a Paris Olympic finalist.
World championship bronze medallist Mehuli Ghosh of West Bengal won bronze.
Shambhavi was in fact the star of the day as she won a silver in the junior women’s event and a second gold in the youth women’s competition.
Shambhavi would, however, cherish the gold in the women’s event the most as she was pitted against established names like Mehuli, Ramita, and Ananya Naidu, the recently-crowned national champion, and Shreya Agrawal, a junior world championship medallist, among others.
Heading into the final two shots of the 24-shot decider, it was Ramita who led by 0.1. Both shooters then shot identical 10.2 for their 23rd shot, but then Shambhavi’s final salvo left the Olympian way short with a total of 252.1 against the winner’s 252.9. Mehuli had bowed out after the 22nd with 231.0.
Ramita, however, got one back on Shambhavi, winning the next junior women’s final by a bigger margin of 1.5. Manya Mittal of Uttar Pradesh was third.
Shambhavi then came back to take the youth women’s crown, this time over Nidhi Mittal of Karnataka, with a tally of 253.6.
Nidhi was 1.8 behind, while Madhya Pradesh’s Gautami Bhanot was third.
The senior qualification field attracted 411 shooters.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – PTI)
