Asian Shooting Championships 2023: Arjun Babuta, Tilottama Sen secure Paris 2024 Olympic quotas for India
Babuta and Sen won the silver medals in men’s and women’s 10m air rifle events, respectively. India also won gold in men’s 10m air rifle team and mixed team skeet.
Shooting
Arjun Babuta and Tilottama Sen secured two more Paris 2024 Olympic quotas for India after winning the silver medals in the men’s and women’s 10m air rifle events, respectively at the Asian Shooting Championships 2023 in Changwon, the Republic of Korea on Friday.
India have now secured 10 Olympic quotas in shooting, including the full allotment of two per gender in the 10m air rifle events. Rudrankksh Patil, in men’s air rifle, and Mehuli Ghosh, in women’s air rifle, had obtained Paris 2024 quotas earlier.
The Asian Shooting Championships 2023 is a qualifying event for the Paris 2024 Olympics. A total of 24 Olympic quotas are on offer with the top two finishers (one per country) in each of the 12 Olympic shooting events securing a spot for their national teams.
As National Olympic Committees have the exclusive authority for the representation of their respective countries at the Olympic Games, athletes' participation at the Paris Games depends on their NOC selecting them to represent their delegation at Paris 2024.
Arjun Babuta, 24, shot 633.4 to top the qualification round while Divyansh Singh Panwar finished third with a score of 632.3. In the final, Babuta shot 251.2 to finish behind the People’s Republic of China’s Sheng Lihao, a Tokyo 2020 silver medallist, who shot 252.1. India’s Divyansh Singh Panwar, with 209.6, finished fourth while Japan's Naoya Okada took bronze with 230.6.
Hriday Hazarika, with 626.7, finished 21st in qualifying. The trio of Arjun Babuta, Divyansh Singh Panwar and Hriday Hazarika, with a combined score of 1892.4, won the gold medal in the men’s team 10m air rifle category, beating China to the top podium.
India’s Ravishankar Karthik (631.5) and Rudrankksh Patil (630.8) also finished in the top eight in the qualifying round but didn’t feature in the final as both were shooting for ranking points only (RPO).
In the women’s 10m air rifle event, the 15-year-old Tilottama Sen shot 630.5 to finish sixth in qualifying before managing 252.3 in the final to settle for silver. South Korea’s Eunji Kwon took the gold with 252.4 while Tilottama’s compatriot Ramita, who shot 629.5 in qualifying, clinched bronze with 230.6.
Elavenil Valarivan shot 631.5 in qualifying to finish third while India’s Nancy placed seventh with 630.3. Both were shooting for ranking points only (RPO).
Shriyanka Sadangi, who finished 26th in the qualifying round with 626.2, was part of the bronze medal-winning Indian women’s 10m air rifle team with Tilottama and Ramita. The trio managed a combined total of 1886.2 to finish behind China and Singapore.
The Indian duo of Anant jeet Singh Naruka, an Asian Games 2023 silver medallist, and Darshna Rathore, meanwhile, bagged a gold medal in the mixed team skeet event after beating Kuwait 40-37 in the gold medal match.
Kuwait had topped the qualification round with 140 while India ousted Korea and Qatar in a shoot-off to make the gold medal match.