ISSF World Championship HIGHLIGHTS, Cairo 2022: Narwal finishes 8th in 10m air pistol, fails to win Olympic quota

ISSF World Championship 2022: Catch the action, commentary, highlights, updates and more from the first Paris 2024 quota-bearing competition for rifle and pistol events in Cairo.

FILE PHOTO: Rhythm Sangwan during the 36th National Games in Gujarat. | Photo Credit: VIJAY SONEJI

Highlights

• Women’s 10m air pistol: China’s Lu Kaiman won gold and booked herself a Paris Olympics spot defeating Anna Korakaki of Greece 16-10. Zorana Arunović from Serbia clinched bronze.
• Men’s 10m air pistol: Vijayveer Sidhu with 579 points is 19th. Naveen came close to qualifying for the final but fell short by a solitary inner-10. Shiva Narwal, sixth, was the only Indian to make the ranking round.
• In the ranking match, Narwal came eighth and missed out on an Olympic quota place.
• Women’s 10m air pistol: None of the Indian shooters - Rhythm Sangwan, Yuvika Tomar and Palak - made the final.

Thanks for tuning into Sportstar’s HIGHLIGHTS of the ISSF Rifle/Pistol World Championship 2022 in Cairo, Egypt. This is Santadeep Dey, bringing you the action.

LIVE COMMENTARY

10M AIR PISTOL WOMEN’S MEDAL MATCH

• China’s Lu Kaiman won gold in the women’s 10m air pistol event and booked herself a Paris Olympics spot defeating Anna Korakaki of Greece 16-10.in the gold medal match
• Zorana Arunović from Serbia clinched bronze.

The women’s 10m air pistol finalists.

10M AIR PISTOL WOMEN RELAY 2

• Rhythm, with 576, finishes 17th. Yuvika (574, 25th) is out as well.
• A 95 dents Rhythm’s chances with one series to go. Another 96 for Yuvika.
• Rhythm hits a 97 again. She is 12th. Yuvika scores 96 and is 24th.
• A 96 for Rhythm. She is hovering about the 20s in the rankings. Yuvika hits a 94. Things don’t look good for India.
• Yuvika bounces back in the second series with a 98. Rhythm registers 97. Irina Yunusmetova of Kazakhstan leads the pack in relay 2 with two 99s.
• Rhythm has started off with a 96 in the first series. It is a 94 for Yuvika.

10M AIR PISTOL MEN RANKING MATCH

• SERIES 5 - Yifan Zhang: 52.1, Pavlo Korostylov: 50.7, Wonho Lee: 50.3, Jinyao Liu: 52.0. Lee takes fourth place and a quota. Korostylov wins bronze and pockets the third quota. Yifan Zhang and Liu will fight for gold.
• SERIES 4 - Yifan Zhang: 48.4, Bowen Zhang: 50.8, Gulfam Joseph: 49.3, Pavlo Korostylov: 48.2, Wonho Lee: 50.2, Jinyao Liu: 49.4. Pakistan’s Gulfam Joseph is sixth. He wins an Olympic quota though as there are three Chinese shooters placed above him. Bowen Zhang is fifth.
• SERIES 3 - Yifan Zhang: 50.7, Bowen Zhang: 50.3, Gulfam Joseph: 50.0, Shiva Narwal: 48.6, Viktor Bankin: 47.4, Pavlo Korostylov: 49.8, Wonho Lee: 49.5, Jinyao Liu: 50.2. Narwal fails to convert his junior World Championship gold into one at the senior event. He is eighth. Viktor is seventh.
• SERIES 2 - Yifan Zhang: 50.9, Bowen Zhang: 47.3, Gulfam Joseph: 47.7, Shiva Narwal: 49.9, Viktor Bankin: 49.9, Pavlo Korostylov: 52.2, Wonho Lee: 51.1, Jinyao Liu: 51.6
• SERIES 1 - Yifan Zhang: 52.1, Bowen Zhang: 51.6, Gulfam Joseph: 51.4, Shiva Narwal: 49.1, Viktor Bankin: 50.8, Pavlo Korostylov: 50.1, Wonho Lee: 49.6, Jinyao Liu: 49.3

10M AIR PISTOL WOMEN RELAY 1

• A 94 off the last series. Disappointing show from Palak. She finishes with 568 and will miss the ranking match.
• The penultimate series is going good for now. She has lost a solitary point only in the first six shots. However, she ends up with a 96 again.
• She slips to 24th with another 96. She has lost way too many points.
• She improves her rankings a bit with a 96, does Palak. But she would have to do much more than that to keep her final hopes alive. She is 22nd now.
• Palak eventually finishes with a 91 in the second series. Poor!
• Palak drops six points in the first seven shots of the second series. This isn’t the start she would have wanted. Serbia’s Zorana Arunovic leads. She is almost done with four series while many of the others are yet to complete their second!
• Palak loses five points in the first series. Vietnam’s Thu Vinh Trinh leads with 99.
• Palak to shoot in the first relay. Rhythm and Yuvika to start in relay 2.

Rhythm Sangwan (Bib No. 1625), Yuvika Tomar (Bib No. 1640) and Palak (Bib No. 1614) will be in action in women’s 10m air pistol.

10M AIR PISTOL MEN RELAY 2

• Another 98 in the last series and Narwal will make the final despite the second series scare. Wow!

Shiva Narwal’s shot map.

• Narwal with a 98. However, he is 12th and the best-placed Indian for now.
• Naveen and Narwal both score 96s. Two more series to go. Zhang is No. 1 on the combined trends.
• Another 98 from Naveen. This has been a good recovery, so far, after the poor series up front. Narwal shoots 97. Iran’s Sajad Poorhosseini Lafmejani tops the leaderboard with 100, 98, 98.
• Narwal’s next series, however, is a 95. Naveen does better on this occasion, losing only two points in 10 shots.
• India’s Narwal off to a great start with a 99. Naveen, however, has lost six points in the first eight shots itself. Ukraine’s Pavlo Korostylov gets things rolling with a 100.
• Mohamed Abdelmohsin I Abouteama (QAT), Jorge Alvarez (CUB), Sunday Atabo (NGR), Yongan Hong (HKG) will not start.

10M AIR PISTOL MEN RELAY 1

FILE PHOTO: Shooter Vijayveer Sidhu after winning gold in men’s 10m air pistol during the National Games. | Photo Credit: PTI

• Vijayveer finishes eighth with 579. There are three athletes with the same score and they have been ranked according to the number of inner 10s they have hit. Latvia’s Lauris Strautmanis (seventh) has 22 Xs, Vijayveer has 17, Mikec has 15. This means Vijayveer is all but out of the reckoning ahead of the ranking round. He will be sitting and hoping the top-ranked athlete in the next relay scores either lesser than or equal to 579-16x. Highly unlikely.
• Vijayveer loses two more points and has fallen out of the top eight. He will now have to hope both Kuan-Ting Kuo and Damir Mikec have a poor series hereon. Even if that happens, he will manage to just scrape through into the top eight. He will have to then wait for the top athlete in the next relay to score lower than him.
• Vijayveer, having dropped a solitary point till the sixth shot, was clinging on to the sixth slot. A 9 off the next shot sees him lose another place.
• China’s Jinyao Liu gets a 100 in the fifth series, the third perfect score of this relay. He is third now. If Bankin falters, hereon, we may have a Chinese 1-2.
• Vijayveer gets a 97 in the penultimate series. Takes him to eighth. He will be looking to hit a 98-plus score in the final series which should be good enough to catapult him into the top four.
• Vijayveer enters the top 10 for the first time with a 96 in the latest series. Find below the target map of the previous series, a 98 which has been his best thus far.

Vijayveer shot a 98 in the third series.

• A 98 from Vijayveer sees his ranking improve to 11th. Zhang in the lead, courtesy of the 100 in the previous series.
• Vijayveer gets a 97 in the second series. He is floating about near the 20s on the standings. China’s Yifan Zhang and Marek Kostur of Slovakia get perfect series.
• Vijayveer drops five points in the first 10-shot series to find himself languishing in the bottom half of the leaderboard. In the meantime, Kuwait’s Hamad Al Nmshan and Viktor Bankin of Ukraine move top with 99s.

First up, we will have Vijayveer Sidhu (Bib No.: 1629) in action in 10m air pistol. Shiva Narwal (Bib No.: 1611) and Naveen (Bib No.: 1612) will start in the next relay.

TODAY’S SCHEDULE (Senior quota-bearing events only)

11:30am - 12:45pm IST: 10m air pistol men relay 1

1:30pm - 2:45pm IST: 10m air pistol men relay 2

3:30pm - 4:45pm IST: 10m air pistol women relay 1

5:30pm IST: Final 10m air pistol men

5:30pm - 6:45pm IST: 10m air pistol women relay 2

8pm IST: Final 10m air pistol women

PREVIEW

Olympians Manu Bhaker, Elavenil Valarivan, Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, Anjum Moudgil and Vijay Kumar headline the list of 22 senior Indian athletes eligible for a Paris Olympics 2024 quota at the ISSF Rifle and Pistol World Championship, starting October 12 in Cairo.

Contemporaries Vijayveer Sidhu and Rhythm Sangwan will feature in two individual events each and hence are the only shooters who will have two shots at the quota places.

A total of 32 Olympic quotas will be on offer in the Egyptian capital. Of these, eight quotas – four in men and as many in women’s disciplines – will be in each 10m air rifle, 50m rifle 3 positions, and 10m air pistol. There will also be eight quotas up for equal distribution between participants in men’s 25m rapid fire pistol and women’s 25m sports pistol.

In the ongoing Olympic cycle – which started on August 14 this year and will conclude on June 9, 2024 – 32 berths in the Paris 2024 bus have already been taken via competitions. Only one of these has been won by India, thus far, with Bhowneesh Mendiratta finishing fourth in men’s trap at the recently concluded Shotgun Worlds in Osijek.

There are 340 Paris Olympic quotas assigned to the world body of shooting by the International Olympic Committee. While 300 of these are rewarded through competitions, the remaining are distributed to the host (12), Universality place holders (16) and the highest-ranked athletes in each discipline during the Olympic qualification period (12).

With each National Olympic Committee allowed 24 quotas (12 for men and 12 for women) across all events, there is much to fight for.

Rudrankksh Balasaheb Patil and Arjun Babuta are favourites to lay hands on India's first rifle quota on October 14. Babuta, currently ranked No. 1 in the country, gave a glimpse of exemplary mental strength after finishing with a silver medal in the 36th National Games in Gujarat, despite just managing to squeeze through to the eight-man final earlier. Patil was the gold medallist at the event.

Among women, all eyes will be on Mehuli Ghosh, who has, in 2022, started training at Gagan Narang’s Gun for Glory, having moved over from the Joydeep Karmakar Shooting Academy. Her coach Bibaswan Ganguly is confident of her chances, the shooter having maintained the best average score of 629.58 among all 10m rifle wielders in NRAI’s Stage 2 and Stage 3 competitions, which concluded with the sixth selection trials in August.

Meanwhile, Vijayveer will be India’s best bet to return home with a pistol quota. Participating in both 10m air and 25m rapid fire pistol, the Punjab lad is on a hot streak, having won both the 10m air pistol events (individual and mixed) at NGG 2022. The individual round would serve as more of a confidence booster, with him having scored an emphatic 17-5 win over Shiva Narwal. He had missed the 25m rapid fire event as he had to appear for an examination.

With Bhaker suffering from a poor run of form and Esha Singh in the junior team, Rhythm emerges as the strongest contender for a pistol quota among women. The Haryana shooter was consistent with her performances in Gujarat 2022, winning three medals in 10m air pistol (silver in individual and bronze in mixed team) and 25m sports pistol (silver).

The contest in 50m 3P is tighter, and it will all depend on who can keep their calm on the day of the competition.

- Santadeep Dey

WHERE TO WATCH ISSF SHOOTING WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP?

A few finals will be available for live streaming on Olympics’ official YouTube channel. On Saturday, the 10m air pistol finals - men (5:22pm IST) and women (7:52pm IST) - will be telecast.