ISSF World Championship: Gold rush continues for juniors, Gurpreet adds senior silver
CHANGWON Sep 14 : Gurpreet Singh clinched a silver in the senior men’s standard pistol but India’s junior shooters continued to hold centre-stage, snaring two gold medals to steer the country to its best-ever finish in the ISSF World Championships in Changwon on Friday.
Vijayveer Sidhu, 16, shot a gold in the 25m standard pistol event for junior men after combining with Rajkanwar Singh Sandhu and Adarsh Singh to claim the team gold on the last day of the prestigious International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) competition.
India signed off third in the overall medals tally with 11 gold, nine silver and seven bronze medals for a total of 27, making this their best performance in the showpiece.
Sidhu, who finished fourth in the 25m pistol Thursday, managed an individual score of 572 to finish ahead of Korean Lee Gunheyok (570) and China’s Haojie Zhu 565).
In the team competition, Sidhu, Sandhu (564) and Singh (559) totalled 1695 to fetch the top honours with Korea (1693) and Czech Republic (1674) settling for the silver and the bronze medals respectively.
Singh managed a fourth-place finish in the individual competition.
In the senior competition, Gurpreet Singh ensured that the contingent signed off on a positive note with his silver.
The former Commonwealth Games gold-medallist fired a score of 579 to finish second behind Ukraine’s Pavlo Korostylov, who shot a score of 581. The bronze medal went to Koreas Kim Junhong, who shot the same score as the Indian but had lesser inner-10s to his credit.
India ended fourth in the team event with Gurpreet, Amanpreet Singh (560) and London Olympics silver-medallist Vijay Kumar (560) combining for a score of 1699.
India’s junior women’s skeet team finished a creditable fourth with the trio of Simranpreet Kaur, Parinaaz Dhaliwal and Areeba Khan totalling 318. None of them managed to qualify for the individual finals.
In the men’s skeet event, Angad Vir Singh Bajwa shot 118 to finish 49th, followed by Sheeraz Sheikh (115) at 69th. Mairaj Ahmad Khan shot 113 to finish 77th. The team finished 20th.
In the men’s 300M rifle 3 positions Parul Kumar (1134) was the best-placed Indian at 24th, while Amit Kumar shot 1124 to finish 28th. Akash Ravidas was further down at at 35th with a score of shot 1077. The team finished 8th with 3335 points.
The country has managed to clinch two Olympic quota places from the first qualifying event for Tokyo 2020 Games.
Anjum Moudgil and Apurvi Chandela are shooters to secure quota places for the Olympics by winning a silver and finishing fourth respectively in the women’s 10m air rifle event.
Though the two shooters have secured quotas, as per the stated policy, the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) will take the final call on selection, based on the aggregate scores of shooters (in international tournaments and selection trials) leading up to the Olympic Games.
With the Youth Olympic Games scheduled for October, the World Championship concludes ISSF’s engagements for the year.
The next big event will come up in February next year with the first World Cup stage, which will also be a Tokyo 2020 qualifying event, to be held in New Delhi’s Dr. Karni Singh range.
Courtesy: thehindu.com
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Pakistan forces kill 67 Afghan Taliban personnel in overnight operations: Minister
Islamabad (PTI): Pakistan security forces killed another 67 Afghan Taliban personnel in overnight operations, repulsing their attacks at 16 locations along the southwestern border early Tuesday, officials said.
Information Minister Attaullah Tarar provided updates on the ongoing Operation Ghazab lil Haq, launched on Feb 26 in response to the Afghan Taliban raids.
Tarar said that 40 Afghan Taliban personnel were killed in overnight operations in the border region along the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Physical attack was attempted at one place, while a fire raid was conducted on 12 locations, which were all repulsed without any loss of life,” he said in an update posted on X.
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“At least 40 Afghan Taliban were killed in the overnight operations in KP,” he said, adding that “follow-up” operations continued.
Separately, the Afghan Taliban resorted to physical attack from across the border on 16 locations in Northern Balochistan in Qilla Saifullah, Noshki and Chaman districts while engaging Pakistan troops on 25 locations in a fire raid.
“The attacks at all the locations were repulsed with Afghan Taliban suffering 27 killed and scores injured,” he said.
The minister also said that one soldier of the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) Balochistan North was killed while five soldiers were injured.
On Monday, the minister said in a statement that Pakistani security forces killed 435 Afghan Taliban combatants and another 630 of them were injured. He said that 188 tanks and armoured vehicles were destroyed, 31 Afghan posts were captured and 51 locations across Afghanistan were successfully targeted in air strikes.
Meanwhile, state-run PTV reported that the Pakistan armed forces successfully conducted an air operation in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, destroying the Khogani base.
“Fitna al-Khawarij and Afghan Taliban face massive setbacks on every front after unprovoked aggression,” PTV reported, citing sources.
It further reported that security sources said Operation Ghadab-ul-Haq is still ongoing and will continue until its objectives are achieved.
