Aishwary Tomar wins 3P silver on World Cup Final debut
Ranvir Singh
New Delhi: India’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions (3P) champion Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, won a silver in the on-going International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup Final (WCF) Rifle/Pistol/Shotgun on Sunday at Doha’s Lusail Shooting complex, completing a full set of medals at all possible world and continental championships in the sport. The Indian, a double Olympian, former junior world champion, reigning Asian champion and fresh from a world championship silver last month, finished behind Czechia’s Jiri Privratsky, who shot 414.2 in the final played in the new ISSF format of 40-shots, to leave him 0.9 behind. Olympic champion Liu Yukun won bronze.
Aishwary shot 595 in qualification to finish second there as well to China’s Tian Jiaming who blazed the Lusail ranges with a world record 598. Athlete of the Year Jon-Hermann Hegg of Norway and Hungarian ace Istvan Peni were the other top guns in the top eight, which again saw three Chinese go through.
Aishwary was fourth with a score of 102.8 after the 10 shots in the first Kneeling position, shot over two-series of five shots each. In the next 10-shots of the second Prone position is where Aishwary found his momentum and climbed up to second on the leaderboard with strong series of 52.9 and 52 respectively.
Privratsky meanwhile was charting a course of his own, 3.3 ahead of Tomar at the stage. The Olympic champion Liu was third with 20 Standing position shots still to be played.
Tomar then outgunned Privratsky over the next 10-shots to bring the difference down to 1.5. After the 31st, it went down to 0.5 as Privratsky was finding it difficult to get into the 10-ring.
Peni and Tian were first to exit the final as Aishwary went into the lead after the 33rd shot.
The young Frenchman Romain Aufrere then lost a battle for bronze with the Olympic champion, as Privratsky caught up with Tomar and went 0.5 ahead again after the 37th shot with a couple of high 10s as Tomar faltered that wee bit.
The gap was however a mere 0.3 ahead of the final two shots and Tomar fired a 10.1 to the Czech’s 10.3 and then a 10.6 for his 40th, put Privratsky decisively ahead of the Indian to land gold, his third ISSF gold of the year.
Aishwary too ended the year strong after a barren first half, finishing with an Asian Championship gold, a world championship and a world cup final silver each. It was also India’s fourth medal of the Doha WCF.
Sift Kaur Samra in the women’s 3P and Manu Bhaker in the women’s 25m pistol were the two athletes who did not move beyond the qualification stage on the day. Sift shot 584 in her relay to finish 10th while Manu, with a 581 was ninth in her qualification round.