Abhinav Deshwal, Pranjali Dhumal win 10m Air Pistol gold; Kushagra Rajawat claims 50m Rifle Prone bronze at Deaflympics

India’s shooters excel at the 25th Summer Deaflympics in Tokyo as Abhinav Deshwal and Pranjali Prashant Dhumal clinch 10m Air Pistol gold. Kushagra Singh Rajawat wins 50m Rifle Prone bronze, taking India’s shooting medal tally to 11 in the Games.

Hyderabad: Indian shooters continued their fine run at the 25th Summer Deaflympics in Tokyo, as Abhinav Deshwal and Pranjali Prashant Dhumal clinched the gold medal in the 10m Air Pistol event with a dominating 16-6 win over Ya-Ju Kao and Ming-Jui Hsu of Chinese Taipei. In the second event of the day, Kushagra Singh Rajawat won bronze in the 50m Rifle Prone event taking India’s shooting medal tally to 11 and are the only medals India has won till now in Tokyo.

Abhinav and Pranjali maintained their commanding position from the start of the gold medal match and never gave their opponents any chance for a comeback. The pair had earlier equalled the Deaf World and Olympic record in qualification, which was set in the previous Deaflympics by the same pair. The Indian pair shot a combined score of 569-20x with Abhinav shooting 287-12x (97,95,95) and Pranjali 282-8x (95,94,93) to finish on top in qualification. Both shooters had also won silver medals in the individual event on Monday.

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The second Indian pair consisting of women’s individual champion Anuya Prasad and Rudar Vinod Kumar could only manage a seventh-place finish in qualification with a combined score of 553-10x, with Anuya shooting 280-5x (93,91,96) and Rudar 273-5x (92,90,91). Mahla Samiee and Bijan Ghaffari of Iran won the bronze medal overcoming Ukraine’s Sofiia Olenych and Oleksandr Kolodii in the bronze medal match.

In 50m Rifle Prone, Kushagra won the bronze medal with a final score of 224.3. Ukraine’s Dmytro Petrenko won the gold shooting 251.0, breaking the Deaf World and Olympic Records. Colin Mueller of Germany won the silver medal with a score of 245.4.

Mahit Sandhu and Natasha Joshi will be in action tomorrow in the 50m 3 Positions women’s event. Mahit has already won a gold and silver in the 10m Air Rifle Mixed team and individual events respectively.