Elavenil strikes gold at Junior Shooting World Cup

Elavenil Valarivan continued with her high degree of consistency in air rifle and struck gold after topping a strong field of 146 shooters, in the Junior World Cup in Suhl, Germany, on Monday.

Elavenil Valarivan is flanked by silver medallist Wang Zeru of China and Ying-Shin LIn of Chinese Taipei in Suhl.

Elavenil Valarivan continued with her high degree of consistency in air rifle and struck gold after topping a strong field of 146 shooters, in the Junior World Cup in Suhl, Germany, on Monday.

It was the second World Cup gold among the juniors this season for the 18-year-old Elavenil who had won the Sydney World Cup with a qualification world record of 631.4.

With Commonwealth Games silver medallist Mehuli Ghosh who qualified in the second place with 630.3, placing sixth, the onus was on Elavenil to strike the medal and she did that in style.

Elavenil shot 251.7 in the final to beat Wang Zeru of China by 0.8 point. She had a one-point cushion before the last two shots for the gold, and a 9.9 last shot could not harm her chances.

Even before she left for Germany, Elavenil has been in fantastic form during the Kumar Surendra Singh championship in the Capital and the national selection trials aimed towards deciding the team for the World Championship and the Asian Games.

Though born in Tamil Nadu, Elavenil hails from Gujarat and has been training under Project Leap of Gagan Narang Sports Promotion Foundation, with coach Anton Belak playing a significant role in honing her sharpness.

It was the third gold for India after the team gold medals in 50-metre pistol events. In fact, the junior women’s air rifle team could have won the gold by a big margin, but for Mehuli Ghosh not being part of

the squad. The team settled for the bronze behind China and Singapore which were tied on a world record junior score of 1879.9.

India was on top of the medals table with three gold, a silver and three bronze medals, while China and Russia followed with a gold and two silver medals each.

In junior men’s trap, Vrishankaditya Paranjayaditya Parmar shot 113 for the 12th place, and missed the final by two points.

Vivaan Kapoor (110), Ali Aman Elahi (106), Manavaditya Rathore (102), Akash Saharan (101) and Janmajai Rathore (94) followed in the 20th, 27th, 37th, 41st and 57th place respectively in a field of 75 shooters.

In junior women’s trap, Kirti Gupta was 13th with 102, and missed the final by three points. Soumya Gupta (95), Manisha Keer (92), Sharayu Dallvi (80) placed 27th, 28th and 39th respectively in the 50-shooter field.