Rahi Sarnobat wins silver in the 25m Pistol in the ISSF President’s Cup.
Experienced pistol shooter Rahi Sarnobat won India’s third medal in the ISSF President’s Cup by claiming silver in the women’s 25-meter Pistol competition.
India had previously won a silver and a bronze in the men’s 10m Air Pistol event. The ISSF President’s Cup held in Wroclaw, Poland, is the successor to the ISSF World Cup Finals as it is the annual competition to which only the world’s best shooters are invited.
Rahi started well in the 25-meter Pistol final, being in the top three from the start of the match. She was second only to the German Olympic finalist Doreen Vennekamp who led virtually from start to finish.
Rahi suffered a weapon malfunction during Season 9 while trying to catch up with Pennekamp. The malfunction ended any chance of a late counterattack, as the 31-year-old Indian missed most of her shots after repairing the pistol. Rahi finished with 31 points compared to Vennekamp’s 33. However, she did enough to stay ahead of the third French shooter. Mathilde Lamolle who took the podium after a tense tiebreaker against the German Monika Karsch.
Manu Bhaker She got off to a good start in the final until a disastrous sixth series where she missed 4 of 5 shots leading to elimination in sixth place. Others on the field included the 2016 Olympic champion Anna Korakaki, Bronze medalist at Tokyo 2020 Xiao Jiaruixuan and 2016 Olympic bronze medalist, Heidi Diethelm Gerber.
Both Rahi and Manu had ranked with identical scores of 583. The classification was surpassed by the 588-25x of Korakaki.
The cut-off score was 582-19x. From india Chinki yadav finished ninth at 578-13x.
The President’s Cup medal was a good result for Rahi Sarnobat who, like other Indian shooters, had an Olympic Games to forget. In the case of Manu Bhaker, the tournament provided another example of unpredictability.
Mixed team RFP 25m: Manu wins gold
Manu may have struggled in the women’s 25m Pistol individual event, but managed to win her second mixed-tag team gold of the tournament after she and her Turkish partner. Ozgur Varlik defeated the Sino-Estonian duo of Xiao Jiaruixuan and Peeter olesk 9-7 in a non-Olympic 25m rapid fire pistol mixed team competition.
Manu had previously won mixed 10-meter air pistol gold alongside Iran’s Olympic champion Javad Foroughi.
The 25m RFP bronze was won by the Franco-German team consisting of the winner of the women’s 25m pistol gold Doreen Vennekamp and men’s 25 meter RFP bronze medalist Clement Bessaguet who defeated the Korean-German team of Kim Minjung and Oliver Geis 10-4.
Manu and Varlik’s team had qualified for the gold medal match thanks to a score of 366-5x for a second place in qualifying round 2.
The team of Chinki yadav and peru Marko carrillo they also qualified for Stage 2, but the duo crashed in eighth place with a score of 337-5x.
25m rapid fire pistol, men
From China Li Yuehong he was in astonishing form at the President’s Cup, nearly setting world records in both the final and qualifying. The 2020 Olympic bronze medalist topped the qualifications with 592-32x and won the gold medal with a score of 36 in the end.
Reigning Olympic Champion Jean Quiquampoix France tried his best to match the Chinese, but finished second with a score of 34. His compatriot Clement Bessaguet was third. German Christian Reitz, who had previously won gold in the Men’s 10m Air Pistol, finished fourth in his 25m RFP event, his mascot.
50m 3-position rifle, men
From Ukraine, Serhiy Kulish defeated Russia Sergey Kamensky by a one-sided score of 10-0 in the men’s 50-meter 3P rifle final. Kamenskiy had won the silver medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, where Kulish had finished eighth.
Croatian They look at Maricic who had finished sixth in the Olympics won bronze in Wroclaw. Aishwarya Pratap Singh Tomar from India was also invited to the tournament but was rejected due to fitness issues.
50m 3-position rifle, women
American Olympic Finalist Sagen Maddalena countryman defeated Mary tucker by a score of 10-8 in the women’s 50-meter 3P rifle finals. Olympic Fourth Place Finalist Jeanette Hegg Duestad Norway won bronze.
Anjum Moudgil, the only Indian rifle shooter in Poland, failed to reach the final rounds after finishing ninth in qualifying stage 2.
50m Rifle 3 Positions Mixed Team
Sagen Maddalena won her second gold of the day as she and her Hungarian partner Istvan Peni defeated the German-Belarusian team of Jolyn Beer and Yury Shcherbatsevich by a score of 31-13. The team of Duestad and Kamenskiy won bronze after beating Tucker and Kulish’s team 32-28.
Anjum Moudgil’s team and Croatian Petar Gorsa finished ninth in qualifying round 1 with a score of 878-42x and made no further progress.
With this, the inaugural ISSF President’s Cup in rifle/pistol concluded. All the gold medalists in Wroclaw received the Golden Target award. India finished with 2 silver and 1 bronze not counting the 2 golds won by Manu Bhaker in the multinational mixed events. The President’s Shotgun Cup had been held in Cyprus in October 2021. No Indians were invited to that tournament.
While not close to the highs of the 2019 ISSF World Cup Finals, Wroclaw 2021 provided a confidence boost for Indian pistol shooters, particularly after the Tokyo debacle. Now it’s up to NRAI to aim for better results at next year’s Asian Games.
She is a freelance blogger, writer, and speaker, and writes for various entertainment magazines.