President’s Cup | Manu Bhaker wins historic mixed team gold with Iran’s Javad Foroughi
A file image of Manu Bhaker.
|(Twitter)
India's Manu Bhaker and her Iranian partner Javad Foroughi have won the gold medal in the 10m air pistol mixed team shooting event at the inaugural edition of the President’s Cup in Wroclaw, Poland. While Manu is the junior world champion, her partner Faroughi is the Tokyo 2020 gold medalist.
The President's Cup, a rechristened version of the ISSF World Cup Finals, is an invitational tournament that saw only the top-12 shooters in each category of the event. Also, as per the new rules, the pairings are drawn at random, which gives a chance for shooters to team up with players from different nationalities.Â
India's Saurabh Chaudhary partnered with Switzerland’s Heidi Diethelm, while Abhishek Verma was paired with Olena Kostevych of Ukraine. The latter crashed out in the semis. Apart from that, Manu had also managed to top qualification in the women's 10m pistol event ahead of Olympics gold medalists Anna Korakaki of Greece and Ukraine’s Olen Kostevych.
Meanwhile, Yashaswini Singh Deswal could not make it to the next round in the same event and finished 10th. In the men's section in the same event, Saurabh and Abhishek will now compete in the semis, after they finished third and fourth, respectively. Olympic champions Christian Reitz and Javad Foroughi occupied the top two spots.
The semis will be held for men and women on Saturday.
