Some of the country’s leading shooters Rudrankksh Patil, Mehuli Ghosh, Esha Singh, Prithviraj Tondaiman and Ganemat Sekhon will be competing in the World Cup Finals in Doha from Tuesday.
The year-end competition, being revived after four years, has the top-12 ranked shooters on the basis of the season’s performance in World Cups, apart from the three medallists of the World Championship held last year in Baku.
Mehuli has qualified on the basis of her bronze medal in the Worlds. That assured three entries in the event for India. Ramita Jindal and Elavenil Valarivan make the cut on the basis of their ranking from World Cup points.
Tilottama Sen currently has a world ranking of five in air rifle, but that rank is all-inclusive of the other ISSF championships. Equally, Sift Kaur Samra has a high rank in rifle 3-position event, but does make the cut for the World Cup Finals.
World champion Rudrankksh and Hriday Hazarika figure in air rifle while women’s air pistol will feature Esha and T.S. Divya, and men’s air pistol will have Sarabjot Singh.
Anish Bhanwala made the cut in rapid fire pistol.
A few other shooters also made the cut, but opted to skip the World Cup Finals and focus on training at home or compete in the ongoing Nationals, the way Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar has done.
Akhil Sheoran will be competing in men’s rifle 3-position event after having shot in the National’s qualification stage before flying out to Doha.
The World Cup Finals will offer €5,000 for the champion in each of the 12 Olympic events. The silver and bronze medallists will be presented €4,000 and €2,000 respectively.
The opening day’s competition on Tuesday will feature air pistol events for men and women. The overall competition will be spread over five days.
