Shooter Anish Bhanwala won the silver medal in the 25m Rapid Fire Pistol event at the 16th Asian Shooting Championship in Shymkent, Kazakhstan on Wednesday as India consolidated their position at the top of the medal tally with 74 medals, including 39 gold, 18 silver and 17 bronze medals.
The 22-year-old Olympian shot 35 in the finals and was edged to the gold by China’s Su Lianbofan, who shot 36 and went on to create new World Junior and Asian Junior Championships Records.
This was Bhanwala’s second individual medal at the Asian Championships. Earlier, he won bronze in Changwon in 2023. Bhanwala also won the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games 2018 in Gold Coast and helped India win a team bronze at the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou.
Bhanwala, along with Adarsh Singh and Neeraj Kumar, had earlier picked up the team silver with a combined score of 1738. Adarsh also qualified for the finals in second place after scoring 585 in qualification, but finished fifth in the finals. Neeraj shot 570 in qualification.
In the finals, Bhanwala was leading until the end of the fourth series, missing two shots out of the possible 20. Su equalised in the fifth series after hitting a perfect five, and Bhanwala missed one. The Chinese shooter maintained a one-point difference with Bhanwala, who missed one each in the next two series. In the last series, Bhanwala, who shot firs,t hit a perfect five and maintained pressure on his opponent but Su held his nerve and hit a perfect five to seal the gold medal.
Junior Mixed Team Trap settle for Silver
In the final Olympic event of the championship, the trap mixed team pair of Kynan Darius Chenai and Aashima Ahlawat lost to Kazakhstan’s Alisher Alsalbayev and Aizhan Dosmagambetova 34-38 in the Bronze Medal match. The pair had earlier qualified for the medal match after surviving a shoot-off against Korea’s Chang Hee Jung and Seonah Cho. The other Indian pair, Lakshay Sheoran and individual champion Neeru Dhanda finished 9th in qualification with a score of 132.
In Junior Mixed Team Trap, Aryavansh Tyagi and Bhavya Tripathi settled for the silver after suffering a narrow 37-38 defeat to Kazakhstan’s Nikita Moisseyev and Eleonora Ibragimova in the Gold Medal match.
© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
