Saurabh Chaudhary starts 2020 on a golden note
The Asian Games gold medallist shot a score of 246.4 in the final to finish atop Sarabjot Singh.
The former Youth Olympics champion and current world no. 1 shooter, Saurabh Chaudhary oozed class in the ongoing 63rd National Shooting Championship competitions in Bhopal.
After finishing the qualification round in the first position with a score of 583, the 17-year-old extended his dominance in the final round as well.
Saurabh misses world record by a whisker
The competition had started with a strong field of 728 shooters making it an immensely difficult task for Chaudhary, but the two-time individual gold medallist in the World Cups last year didn’t pay much heed to it.
Shooting a score of 246.4 in the final, Chaudhary defeated compatriot and mixed team partner Sarabjot Singh by 2.5 points in the individual event. In the process, Chaudhary also came agonizingly close (just 0.1 point behind) to match Kim Song Guk’s world record in the 10-metre Air Pistol category that was created last November in the Asian Championship in Doha, Qatar.
Sarabjot Singh finished second with a score of 243.9 in the final after finishing the qualification with 580, while Abhishek Verma ended on the third place with a score of 221.1 despite finishing the qualification stages above Sarabjot with 581.
Haryana tops team events
Haryana swept away all the team golds in a fantastic fashion. The state finished with a score of 1734 above Marksmanship Unit (1733) and Uttar Pradesh (1730) in the 10m Air Pistol team event, while they topped the juniors team event with a score of 1727 ahead of Uttar Pradesh (1716) and Army Marksmanship Unit (1707).
Other results
After finishing second in the 10m Air Pirstol, Sarabjot compensated for that by winning the junior gold medal by scoring 580 in the qualification and 243.3 in the final. He finished 1.1 points ahead of Boby Kaushik 242.2, who had scored two points more than Sarabjot in the qualification stage. Qualification topper Shiva Narwal (583) finished third with 222.3.
A big highlight of the competition was in the youth category where Sharvan Kumar won the gold medal by shooting a score of 575 in the qualification and 242.7 in the final. He could score just half a point more than Shiva Narwal, which was a some achievement given the fact that the youth field had 1307 shooters and 1256 managed to complete competition.
13-year-old Shiva Narwal, however, ended the tournament with a gold medal in the sub-youth category with a score of 583, finishing ahead of Lucky (575) and Mukesh Nelavalli (571).