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IMAGE: Anant Jeet Naruka overcame former Asian Games champion Mansour Al Rashidi of Kuwait to win gold in the skeet event at the Asian Shooting Championships. Photograph: NRAI/X
Indian shooter Anant Jeet Singh Naruka fired his way to his first individual gold medal in the Asian Championships after edging out Kuwait’s Mansour Al Rashidi in the men’s skeet final in Shymkent, Kazakhstan, on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, the Indian pair of Saurabh Chaudhary and rising teenager SuruchiInder Singh clinched the 10m air pistol mixed team bronze, beating Chinese Taipei.
Naruka finished on top of the podium after prevailing over former Asian Games champion Al Rashidi 57-56 in the final.
Al-Ishaq Ali Ahmed of Qatar settled for the bronze medal with 43.
The 27-year-old Naruka, who has won team gold and mixed team gold in the 2023 edition of the championships, qualified for the final in second position with 119 after five rounds, while Kuwait’s Abdulaziz Alsaad led the pack with 120 on their way to the final.
Al Rashidi was third in the qualification with 119.
For Naruka, an Asian Games silver medallist, this was his fifth medal overall in the continental tournament.
Earlier, the duo of Saurabh and Suruchi defeated Liu Heng-Yu and Hsieh Hsiang-Chen 17-9 to add to the individual bronze that double Olympic-medallist Manu Bhaker had won in the women’s 10m air pistol competition on Tuesday.
The Indian pair qualified for the medal round in fifth place with Suruchi firing 292 and Saurabh scoring 286. The duo aggregated 578 in qualification as six teams made it to the medal round.
IMAGE: Saurabh Chaudhary and Suruchi Inder Singh won the 10m air pistol mixed team bronze, beating Chinese Taipei. Photograph: NRAI/X
The top two teams, China and South Korea, competed for the gold medal with the former winning 16-12. The other four teams competed for two bronze medals, with India overcoming Chinese Taipei in the first bronze-medal match and Iran defeating Vietnam 16-8 in the other.
Earlier, Suruchi, who has been on song this season winning four World Cup gold medals, started the qualification round with a perfect 100 in the opening series. She faltered in the second to score 94 and ended the preliminary round with a 98.
Chaudhary had series of 95, 96 and 95.
In the fight for the bronze, where the first team to reach 16 points wins the match, Suruchi had seven scores in the ’10s’, six of them 10.4 or above, which played a big role in the victory.
In the junior 10m air pistol mixed team event, the Indian pair of Vanshika Chaudhary and Gavin Anthony won the gold, defeating the Korean duo of Kim Yejin and Kim Dooyeon 16-14.
The Indians finished second in the qualification round with an aggregate score of 578, with Vanshika firing 282 and Gavin 296.
