India’s Rudrankksh Patil becomes 10m rifle men world champion, seals quota for Paris 2024 Olympics
Rudrankksh Patil beat Italy’s Danilo Sollazzo 17-13 in the final at the ISSF Rifle/Pistol World Championship 2022. India sealed their second Olympic quota in shooting.
Indian shooter Rudrankksh Patil won the gold medal in the individual men’s 10m air rifle at the ISSF Rifle/Pistol World Championship 2022 in Cairo, Egypt on Thursday.
The 18-year-old Rudrankksh Patil also secured a quota place for India for the Paris 2024 Olympics. This is India’s second quota in shooting for the Summer Games after trap shooter Bhowneesh Mendiratta.
Rudrankksh Patil beat Italy’s Danilo Dennis Sollazzo 17-13 in the final to be crowned the world champion. He became India’s sixth shooting world champion after Abhinav Bindra, Tejaswini Sawant, Manavjit Singh Sandhu, Om Prakash Mitherval and Ankur Mittal.
In the final, two points were awarded to the shooter who wins a series and the first to 16 points wins the gold.
Rudrankksh Patil and Danilo Sollazzo split the first two series before the Italian moved into a 10-4 lead after the seventh series and 11-7 after the ninth.
It was then that the Indian teenager began to make a comeback, winning the next series to make it 11-9 and Danilo Sollazzo made it 13-9 in the 11th series.
Rudrankksh Patil then never shot below 10.5 as he won the next four series to take the gold medal.
Rudrankksh Patil had earlier topped the qualification rounds with a score of 633.9.
Another Indian Ankush Jadhav finished eighth in the men’s 10m air rifle final.
Rudrankksh Patil’s gold is India’s second medal at the ongoing shooting world championships, with the women’s team of Naamya Kapoor, Vibhuti Bhatia and Esha Singh winning bronze in the 25m pistol junior women’s team.