International shooter Ramita, Swapnil, Anish win national rifle/pistol trials
New Delhi: India’s international shooters Ramita Jindal, Swapnil Kusale and Anish Bhanwala emerged victorious on the second day of the National Rifle/Pistol Selection Trials 1 being held at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range in the city. Ramita won the women’s 10m air rifle trials 1 in a close contest with her Haryana state teammate Nancy.
Paris quota winner Anish was a class apart in the men’s 25m rapid-fire pistol (RFP), while in the only final to be played in the 50m range, Swapnil, another Paris quota winner, capped Haryana’s sweep , entered. Easy victory in men’s 50m rifle 3 positions event.
Ramita was behind Nancy in the qualification, who topped the list with 634.9 points, and West Bengal’s Swarnali Roy was third. Her 630.4 placed her in fourth place, but she remained strong throughout the final, losing the lead only once by 0.1 due to a late surge from Nancy after the 20th shot. It rose to 0.3 after 22nd, but finishing with two solid 10.8 and 10.6 meant he won it by 0.5 in the end.
However, there was no stopping Anish in the men’s RFP. After topping two days of qualification with a strong score of 588, he opened Tuesday’s final with four hits in the first of eight series of five rapid-fire shots.
With this, he is in joint lead with Ankur Goyal of Uttar Pradesh. None of the other five finalists, including Olympian Gurpreet Singh, were able to match his consistency, although the ISSF World Cup Final bronze medalist hit a few more fours and two perfect fives to wrap up the match with a score of 31. Sena was close behind with 25, while Ankur was third with 21 hits.
In the men’s 50m rifle 3 positions, Swapnil made it to the final representing Railways, alongside Olympian Deepak Kumar, India international Neeraj Kumar and Khelo India Youth Games champion Adrian Karmakar. His final score was 463.0, which was 3.5 more than second place Nikhil Tanwar of Gujarat.
Navy’s Neeraj stood third and Adrian stood fourth. Earlier, Swapnil had also secured the top position in the qualification by scoring 593 with a huge margin of four points.
