India opened their account at the ongoing ISSF World Cup on Tuesday with the trio of Elavenil Valarivan, Ramita and Shreya Agrawal claiming the gold medal in the women’s 10m air rifle team competition in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The Indian trio beat Denmark represented by Anna Nielsen, Emma Koch and Rikke Maeng Ibsen, 17-5 in the gold medal contest. Poland won bronze.
Former world No 1 Elavenil, Ramita, and Shreya had reached the gold medal clash after two rounds of qualification on Monday. The Indian trio first topped qualification stage one with a combined effort of 944.4 over 90 shots and among 17 competing teams. They then came second in stage two behind Denmark, to make the title round. The trio shot 628.6 to Denmark’s 629.2 after all three team members shot 20-shots each.
In men’s air rifle team competition, Indian trio of Rudrankksh Patil, Paarth Makhija and Dhanush Srikanth fell short in their bronze medal match against Croatia, going down 10-16. They had finished third in qualification stage two to make it to the bronze medal match. They had come in second to Austria in stage one to make the top eight stage out of 14 teams.
Earlier in the 10m Air Rifle Mixed Team event, both the pairing of Shreya and Rudrankksh and Elavenil and Paarth, could not make much headway. The former finished 14th in qualification with a score of 625.6 while the latter shot 623.5 for a 24th place finish.
India are currently on the fifth spot in the medals tally with Serbia leading the field with two golds and a total of four medals.
