ISSF World Cup | Elavenil Valarivan wins 10m air rifle gold

The youngster had managed to record better scores than compatriots Apurvi Chandela and Anjum Moudgil in qualification, who are ranked first and second in the world respectively. While Valarivan and Moudgil had secured qualification to the eight-member final with scores of 629.4 and 629.1 respectively, Chandela missed out as she finished in eleventh with a score of 627.7.

However, in the final showdown, Moudgil had the upper hand initially as she was on top of the leaderboard for the first five rounds. Valarivan soon after displaced her after Moudgil shot a poor second round, leaving her reeling at the fifth spot. There onwards, there was no looking back for her as she continuously shot one 10 after the other to end 1.1 points ahead of Britain’s Seonaid McintoshIn who claimed the silver having shot 250.6. Chinese Taipei’s Ying-Shin Lin completed the podium and also qualified for the Olympics, with India and Britain having already fulfilled their two maximum quotas. Moudgil, however, slipped up a spot further to finally end up at the sixth position.

In the men’s 50m rifle 3 Positions, Sanjeev Rajput, Parul Kumar and Chain Singh survived the first elimination round to make it to the qualifiers. Rajpiut shot an impressive 1170 to end up at a comfortable 14th, whereas Parul Kumar finished 10th in his elimination round with a score of 1169. Singh was at 27th having shot 1163.