Asian Shooting C'ship: Anish Bhanwala wins silver in 25m Rapid Fire Pistol

Shymkent (Kazakhstan), Aug 27 (IANS) Olympian Anish Bhanwala secured the silver medal in 25m Rapid Fire Pistol event at the 16th Asian Shooting Championship in Shymkent, Kazakhstan on Wednesday as India consolidated their position on top of the medal tally with 74 medals including 39 gold, 18 silver and 17 bronze.

The 22-year old Anish who shot 35 in the finals was edged to the gold by China’s Su Lianbofan who shot 36 and went on to create new World Junior and Asian Championships Junior Records.

Anish along with Adarsh Singh and Neeraj Kumar had earlier picked up the team silver with a combined score of 1738. Adarsh also qualified for the finals in second place after scoring 585 in qualification but finished fifth in the finals, Neeraj shot 570 in qualification.

In the finals, Anish was leading until the end of the fourth series, missing two shots out of the possible 20. Su equalised in the fifth series after hitting a perfect five and Anish missing one. The Chinese shooter maintained a one point difference with Anish, who missed one each in the next two series. In the last series, Anish who shot first hit a perfect five and maintained pressure on his opponent but Su held his nerve and hit a perfect five to seal the gold medal.

In the final Olympic event of the championship, the trap mixed team pair of Kynan Darius Chenai and Aashima Ahlawat lost to Kazakhstan’s Alisher Alsalbayev and Aizhan Dosmagambetova 34-38 in the Bronze Medal match. The pair had earlier qualified for the medal match after surviving a shoot off against Korea's Chang Hee Jung and Seonah Cho. The other Indian pair, Lakshay Sheoran and individual champion Neeru Dhanda finished 9th in qualification with a score of 132.

In Junior Mixed Team Trap, Aryavansh Tyagi and Bhavya Tripathi settled for the silver after suffering a narrow 37-38 defeat to Kazakhstan’s Nikita Moisseyev and Eleonora Ibragimova in the Gold Medal match.

With all the Olympic events coming to an end at the championships, the action will now shift to non-Olympic events which got underway on Wednesday with India winning two medals, gold in the 50m Pistol Men Junior Team and silver in the senior category.

--IANS

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