Arjun Babuta, seven foreigners to participate in virtual shooting competition

Babuta won silver in Junior Men's 10m air rifle at the 2017 Asian Championships and has three ISSF Junior World Cup bronze medals.

Representative Image: As per the competition schedule, each day will witness two shooters in a 'Race to 10' face off. The shooter with the higher shot will win a point and the one who reaches 10 points first will be declared the winner.

India's Arjun Babuta will be among eight top shooters from across the world to compete in an upcoming online competition named 'TOPGUN.

The virtual event will be held from April 29 to May 8.

The 22-year-old Babuta, who is from Chandigarh and registered with the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI), has got the nod to participate in the competition from the sport's governing body, organiser Shimon Sharif said.

Babuta won silver in Junior Men's 10m air rifle at the 2017 Asian Championships and has three ISSF Junior World Cup bronze medals.

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"I have designed this competition to make it very interesting and viewer-friendly. Some of the best shooters in the world will be seen competing one-on-one against each other for the first time ever. I want to give it a look of a video game with complete stats of the shooter," Sharif said.

Leading the way in the start list is 2016 Rio Olympic gold medallist Ginny Thrasher of the USA. Her teammate and world number three Lucas Kozeniesky has also confirmed his participation, and so have Austria's celebrated duo of Martin Strempfl and Bernhard Pickl, Serbia's Milenko Sebic, Shiri Sternberg of Israel and Spain's Mireia Rosello.

The 23-year-old Thrasher made news in November last when she emerged from lockdown and won gold at the Hungarian Open, despite seeing no action for almost nine months.

Lucas, 25, has been in red-hot form of late, bagging gold at the ISSF World Cup in New Delhi last month. The gold was his third in international competitions. He had also teamed up with Thrasher to win the team gold for the US at the Hungarian Open.

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Martin is an Olympic quota winner for his country while Bernhard bagged gold at the 2019 European Championships in Bologna in Men's 300m Standard Rifle.

Serbia's Milenko, who competed at the 2016 Rio Olympics, is another experienced shooter with a silver at the 2019 ISSF World Cup Final in Putian in Men's 50m Three Positions.

Shiri was an integral part of the Israeli team that took part in OSL, like Spain's Mireia.

As per the competition schedule, each day will witness two shooters in a 'Race to 10' face off.

The shooter with the higher shot will win a point and the one who reaches 10 points first will be declared the winner. It will be a best-of-three match, so a shooter who wins two 'Race to 10' matches, for example, 2-0 or 2-1, will be declared the day's winner.