World Champion Rudrankksh Balasaheb Patil has made it to all three possible ranking rounds in the Men's 10m Air Rifle, at the ongoing 65th National Shooting Championship Competitions (65th NSCC) in Rifle events, being held at the Vattiyoorkkavu Shooting Range in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
Rudrankksh's score of 631.70 in qualification, meant that he came second in the Men's Air Rifle while topping the fields in the Junior Men's and Youth Men's categories, to make it to the second ranking round in all three events.
Army man Sandeep topped the 843-strong Men's 10m Air Rifle with a score of 632.6. Olympian Divyansh Singh Panwar, also made it to the Men's and Junior Men's ranking rounds with a score of 631.5. He finished third in the Men's qualification.
The Men's Trap finals are also coming up on Tuesday at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range in Delhi where the Shotgun nationals are being held. Tamil Nadu's Prithviraj Tondaiman topped the qualifiers with a score of 121. Lakshay Sheoran, Vivaan Kapoor, Manavaditya Singh Rathore and Olympian Kynan Chenai are some of the names he will have to contend with in the title round.
Earlier the Indian teenager had created history in the Egyptian capital Cairo, pulling off a dramatic 17-15 victory over Italy's Danilo Dennis Sollazzo in the gold medal match and has been crowned World Champion in the Men's 10m Air Rifle, an Olympic event.
The 18-year-old also emulated Abhinav Bindra, India's first individual Olympic gold medallist, as a world champion in Men's Air Rifle. Bindra had won the crown in the same event in Zagreb in 2006.
The Thane boy shot astoundingly well to not only win the biggest prize of his life to date but also a Paris 2024 Olympics quota for his country.
It was India's second Paris quota in the sport of Shooting after Bhowneesh Mendiratta had won the first in the Men's Trap at the Shotgun World Championships in Osijek, Croatia, which preceded the Cairo World Championships for Rifle and Pistol.
Silver medallist at the Junior World Championships in Lima last year and a gold medallist at the Junior World Cup in Suhl earlier this year, this was Rudrankksh's first medal at the senior level. He had broken through to the senior squad at the beginning of the year and had registered seventh and 11th-place finishes in the Baku and Cairo World Cups earlier.
( With inputs from ANI )
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