Mehuli Ghosh clinches women's 10m air rifle gold in National T2 trials

Bhopal, March 13 Mehuli Ghosh of West Bengal beat Karnataka's Tilottama Sen 17-9 to clinch gold in the women's 10m air rifle National T2 trials here on Sunday. Mehuli had earlier finished second in the T1 trials on Friday.

Tilottama, however, won the junior women's 10m air rifle T2 trial. She also finished second in the youth T2 competition, for a profitable three-medal day.

Mehuli, a Youth Olympic Games silver medallist, had shot 630.1 on Saturday to qualify for the top-eight stage in the sixth position. Gujarat's Elavenil Valarivan topped the field with 632.1.

From the two semi-finals on Sunday, Mehuli, Tilottama and Elavenil were joined in the medal match by Haryana's Ramita. Here, Elavenil settled for bronze with 37 points while Mehuli (48) and Tilottama made it to the title round.

In the junior women's final, Tilottama clashed with Arya Rajesh Borse of Maharashtra, who had won the T1 junior trials on Friday. This time, however, Tilottama got the better of Arya, winning 17-5 in the end. She had to settle for silver again in the all-Karnataka youth final, where Yukthi Rajendra beat her 17-9.

The men's 50m rifle 3 positions (3P) T1 and T2 trials were also completed on Saturday. Niraj Kumar of the Indian Navy got the better of Madhya Pradesh's Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar by a margin of 17-5 in the T1 gold medal match-up, while the seasoned Army marksman Chain Singh beat the Railways' Swapnil Suresh Kusale 17-9 to win the T2 trials.

Over 3,300 shooters, including all top shooters of the country, are participating in the year's first National trials after they were postponed from January, because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Indian teams for the upcoming World Cup in Baku and Junior World Cup in Suhl will be selected on the basis of these trials.

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