ISSF World Championship 2022 HIGHLIGHTS: Swapnil Kusale wins Olympic quota, Rhythm Sangwan out of first ranking match

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 at the 36th National Games in Gujarat. | Photo Credit: VIJAY SONEJI

Highlights

• Swapnil Kusale enters the men’s 50m rifle 3 positions with the second highest qualification score of 593. Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar lost out on a place even after registering a perfect series in Prone.
• Kusale wins the Paris 2024 Quota which will give him a bonus point during NRAI’s Olympic Selection Trials (OST) in 2024. He lost out on a medal after registering an 8.2 off his last shot.
• Rhythm Sangwan finishes third in women’s 25m pistol qualification. She will be the only Indian to feature in the final as Manu Bhaker and Abhidnya Ashok Patil exit the contest. Later, she crashed out of the first ranking match.

Welcome to the highlights of the ISSF Rifle/Pistol World Championship 2022 in Cairo, Egypt. This is Santadeep Dey, bringing you all the action.

HIGHLIGHTS

FINAL 25M PISTOL WOMEN

• 2012 Olympic gold medallist Kim is the new world champion! Chen takes silver and Vennekamp bronze.

• From the next ranking round, Antoaneta Kostadinova and Yan Chen make it to the next stage.
• Rhythm with five misses! What just happened?! She has been ruled out. Kim and Doreen Vennekamp make it to the next stage.
• Rhythm jumps into the lead. 11-10 vs Kim.
• Kim and Rhythm tie again. 8/10 hits.
• Rhythm and Jangmi Kim get off the blocks with four hits and a miss.
• Rhythm will start in the first group of four. There will be another group participating post this.

25M PISTOL WOMEN RAPID FIRE STAGE

• Rhythm finishes with a 98 and will feature in the final. Her overall score reads 587 and she finishes third in qualification. Bhaker (583, 10th) and Patil (580, 19th) exit.
• A 97 for Abhidnya and Rhythm in the first and second series.
• Bhaker’s last series is a 96. She has to hope the top athletes in the next relay somehow underperform now. She is 11th on the live leaderboard.
• Bhaker starts in the first rapid fire relay. She scores 195 off her first 20 shots. A good score in the next series should find her well-placed to be in the final.

Manu Bhaker (Bib No. 1582), Rhythm Sangwan (Bib No. 1625) and Abhidnya Ashok Patil (Bib No. 1616) will take to the range in women’s 25m pistol. Sangwan is at the top of the leaderboard after the Precision stage yesterday.

25M RAPID FIRE PISTOL MEN STAGE 1

• Vijayveer Sidhu blazes away to a 294. He places third after Stage 1.
• 2012 Olympic medallist Vijay Kumar finishes the first stage with 288. I’m afraid that wouldn’t be good enough with another stage and relay yet to start.

FINAL 50M RIFLE 3 POSITIONS MEN

• Serhiy Kulish thumps Tomasz Bartnik 16-6 in the gold medal match.

Kusale’s final series’ shot map. An 8.2 saw him slip into the drop zone. | Photo Credit: ISSF

• Kusale hits a disastrous 8.2! My, oh, my... You’ve got to feel for him. He wins a quota place but loses out on a medal when at one moment it felt like he would be heading into the gold medal match. Hegg takes bronze.
• Kowalewicz, 22, and Liu walk. The Chinese takes the fifth place along with a quota.
• Dallinger takes his own sweet time to register the last shot. With less than a minute to go, he hits a 9.7. Hegg survives by 0.1. Dallinger takes the seventh place. Kim is eighth. Kusale is third now with 309.1.
• Eight minutes are done. A 9.7 and 9.6 from Kusale.. Ouch! Yukun Liu and Maciej Kowalewicz both make moves after 25 shots as Maximillian Dallinger and Kim find themselves in the drop zone.
• With a 10.7 and 10.8 in the last series, Kusale jumps to third after the Prone round. If he doesn’t perform that badly in Standing, he should be able to pocket the Olympic quota place.
• Kusale drops to fourth after 15 shots as Bartnik takes the lead with 156.0 points.
• Kusale takes a bit of time more than the others to set himself up during the changeover.
• Jon-Hermann Hegg, the European champion, already has an Olympic quota. With two Polish candidates in the mix and only one of them eligible to win the quota, it makes the contest all the more interesting.
• Kim Jonghyun a country mile behind the rest as he fails to even make the triple digits after Kneeling. Kusale leads with 104.6
• The Maharashtrian starts the second series with a 10.8.
• Kusale starts off with a 10.5, followed by a 9.8. However, he does well to recover with a few high-10s to move to the top after the first five shots in Kneeling.

50M RIFLE 3 POSITIONS MEN STAGE 2

• Kusale enters the final with the second highest qualification score of 593 after China’s Liu Yukun’s 596. Aishwary (14th with 589) and Niraj (19th with 588) are out.
• Kusale, meanwhile, has mostly sealed his place in the final as he records 196 in Standing and a combined score of 593.
• Aishwary gets a 97 in the ultimate series. He will be devastated given how strong his chances of qualifying seemed after the Prone round.
• Kusale starts Standing with a 99. Mighty drop for Aishwary, who lets go of six points in the series. He is 28th now. Niraj gets the Standing event rolling with a 96.

25M RAPID FIRE PISTOL MEN STAGE 1

FILE PHOTO: Anish Bhanwala in action during the 2019 World Cup in Delhi. | Photo Credit: Kamesh Srinivasan

• Anish won’t be happy with his performance thus far as he finishes with a total of 281 in Stage 1.
• Anish Bhanwala starts in 25m rapid fire pistol. He gets 94 and 93 in the first two series.

50M RIFLE 3 POSITIONS MEN STAGE 2

• Aishwary and Kusale have the perfect Prone series - 200/200. Aishwary is fourth, Kusale sixth. Niraj gets a 100 in the second Prone series as well.
• Niraj and Kusale are done with the changeover. The former marks the start of Prone with 99. However, he would still have a lot of yards to cover given he lost four points in the first Kneeling series.
• Wow! A perfect second series from Aishwary in Kneeling catapults him to the fifth spot. Kusale and Niraj score 99s.
• Aishwary and Kusale are off the blocks with 98s. Not the greatest of starts for Niraj though as he scores a 96.
• The Kneeling round begins. Swapnil Kusale (Bib No. 1605), Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar (Bib No. 1638), and Niraj Kumar (Bib No. 1601) are the Indians in this event.

25M RAPID FIRE PISTOL MEN STAGE 1

• Germany’s Peter Florian hits a perfect first series.
• A group of 12 have taken to the lane in men’s 25m rapid fire pistol. The Indians are yet to start.

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

11:30am-4:45pm: 25m rapid fire pistol men stage 1

11:45am-1:15pm: 50m rifle 3 positions men stage 2

2:15pm: Final 50m rifle 3 positions men

5:15pm-6:45pm: 25m pistol women rapid fire stage

7:45pm: Final 25m pistol women

The NRAI recently made a few tweaks in its Olympic qualification policy. Tap on the link in the box below to find out more about it.

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.