Asian Airgun Championship | Manu Bhaker, Saurabh Chaudhary wins 10m air pistol mixed team gold

03/27/2019

Manu Bhaker and Saurabh Chaudhary have won the gold medal in the 10m air pistol mixed team category at the ongoing 12th Asian Airgun Championship in Taoyuan in Taipei. Earlier the Indian pair had broken the qualification world record at the event in the process of winning the title.

It was an excellent start to the 12th edition of the Asian Airgun Championship for the Indian contingent as they clinched two gold medals on Wednesday. Apart from the senior pair of Bhaker and Chaudhary, the Indian junior mixed team comprising of Esha Singh and Vijayveer Sidhu also claimed a gold in the 10m air pistol mixed team category.

The Indian duo had scored a total of 784 in the qualification round which allowed them to set a new record by overtaking Russia’s Vitalina Batsarashkina and Artem Chernousov. The Russian pair had registered the record five days back in the same event of the European Championships. Bhaker and Chaudhary then topped the charts in the finals, where they were up against four other teams, by shooting 484.8.

The Korean duo of Hwang Seongeun and Kim Mose stood second with a score of 481.1 while Wu Chia Ying and Kou Kuan-Ting bagged a bronze medal for hosts Taipei with 413.3.

The duo had also bagged a gold medal earlier during the ISSF Shooting World Cup in Delhi last month in the same category. The second team from India in the same category, comprising Anuradha and Abhishek Verma, had also qualified for the finals but finished at the fourth position with a total of 372.1 points at the end.

In the junior category, Singh and Sidhu shot 478.5 in the final to finish at the first place ahead of their opponents from Korea and Chinese Taipei.