India's plans of bagging the all important quota places for Tokyo Olympics were on target with Anjum Moudgil and Apurvi Chandela winning the first two quotas for the country in the 10m air rifle event. Anjum and Apurvi finished second and fourth respectively in the ongoing ISSF World Championship in Changwon, South Korea.
Anjum, who hails from Chandigarh, also stormed into the history books by becoming the first Indian woman to win a medal―a silver―in the event in the World Championships.
It was a happy outing for the women's air rifle team, which also included Commonwealth Games teen star Mehuli Ghosh, winning the team silver.
Anjum and Apurvi had earlier qualified for the final in 4th and 7th places with respective scores of 628.7 and 627.5. The top eight made it through in the 113-strong field which included defending world champion Petra Zublasing of Italy.
South Korea and India exhausted their maximum quota of two from this event.
After the event, Anjum, who has a Masters in Sports Psychology, said, “I am really happy to win a silver in the World Championships and also the Olympic quota for the country. It was not my main event but I am happy I have improved a lot in this event. I made some changes in my technique and I'm happy that it paid off. Winning a quota was really important and I am happy I was able to achieve that for the country.”
Anjum won the silver in the women's 50m rifle 3 position event at the ISSF World Cup in Mexico in March this year.
Reacting over the stupendous performance of the women's air rifle team, which also included his ward Mehuli Ghosh, Olympian Joydeep Karmakar said, “This is definitely a very big achievement, even better than Asian Games performances as the aim was to secure Olympic quotas. We can now plan properly till Tokyo 2020. There will be very good and very healthy competition between shooters now since the quota belongs to the country and not individual. I am sure we will see some very good and high quality performances of shooters to make it to the Indian team for Olympics.”
Asian Games silver-medalist Deepak Kumar narrowly missed out on a medal and an Olympic quota place in the men's 10m air rifle event. He had qualified for the finals in fourth place with a 630.1 and ended sixth.
The men's trap team disappointed with none of the trap shooters from India making it to the finals. Manavjit Singh Sandhu finished 24th with a score of 119 out of 125; Zoravar Singh Sandhu finished 28th with a score of 118 out of 125; and Asian Games silver-medalist Lakshay Sheoran finishing 35th with a score of 118 out of 125. The team finished 10th in the team event.
