ISSF World Cup 2022 | Indian women's team wins air pistol gold in Cairo
With the women's 10m air pistol team title on Wednesday at the ISSF World Cup in Cairo, Egypt, India added a second gold to their medal count. In the gold medal match, Esha Singh, Shri Nivetha, and Ruchira Vinerkar of India defeated Sandra Reitz, Carina Wimmer, and Andrea Heckner of Germany 16-6.
India currently has two gold and one silver medal from the competition, putting them back on top of the medals table halfway through. Esha Singh earned her second medal in the competition, having previously won an individual silver in the women's 10m air pistol. These are her first medals for India at the senior level.
The Indian ladies were on fire from the start, winning the first qualification stage with an effort of 856 points. They followed it up with a 574 out of 600 in stage two, which saw them advance to the gold medal match, finishing first among the eight teams once more.
With 571 points, the Germans were a full three points behind them, while Chinese Taipei and Singapore advanced to the bronze match, where the former won.
Esha Singh set the tone in the final with a near-perfect 10.8 to help India take the lead. In the third set of single-shots, all three Indian ladies shot 10 or higher, giving them a 6-0 lead.
After a tight fourth round, Germany rallied back to make it 2-6, but the Indians kept the pressure on with solid shooting. They went from 8-4 to 12-4 before closing it out convincingly at 16-6, with Shri Nivetha and Ruchira Vinerkar each hitting crucial strokes when it counted.
India's men's pistol team came in fourth place.
The only other occasion India came near to a medal was in the men's 10m air pistol team competition on a day that witnessed six-team competition finals spanning rifle and pistol disciplines. Saurabh Chaudhary, Gaurav Rana, and Balakrishna Uchaganve finished fourth, losing the bronze medal match 6-16 against Italy.
In reality, in the qualification round two, Saurabh, Gaurav, and Balkrishna shot a cumulative score of 581 out of 600, the same as the top two teams, Germany and Turkey. However, while Germany easily led the field with 25 inner-tens scores, Turkey edged India by the tiniest of margins, earning 20 inner-tens strikes to India's 19.
Germany went on to win gold in the gold medal match, defeating Turkey 16-0.
Esha and Balkrishna failed to go past the qualification stage in the 10m air pistol mixed team event, finishing 19th out of 44 teams with a score of 567.Ā In the 10m, air rifle mixed team, Aayushi Gupta and Rudrankksh Balasaheb Patil advanced to the first semi-final, coming third in the qualification with a combined effort of 630.2 out of 51 teams. They were eliminated in the semi-finals after finishing fourth with 22.5 points.
Divyansh Singh Panwar, Rudrankksh Patil, and Srinjoy Datta, all Tokyo Olympians, qualified for round two after shooting a total of 942.1 to place second out of 19 teams in round one. They again nearly missed out on the medal round, placing fifth in round two, only 0.1 ahead of the Czech Republic, who ended fourth with a score of 624.2, 0.1 ahead of India.
India's Rajshree Sancheti, Shreya Agrawal, and Aayuish Gupta finished fourth out of 20 teams in the women's 10m air rifle team competition. They shot 942.7 to advance to the second semi-finals, where they finished seventh overall with a score of 625.