Changwon
A couple of weeks after his triumph at the Asian Games, India’s Saurabh Chaudhary hunted down yet another gold medal as he won the men’s junior 10m air pistol title, even as teammate Arjun Singh Cheema took the bronze medal at the 52nd ISSF World Championships here on Thursday.

Saurabh, 16, shot a world record score of 245.5, shattering the previous record of 243.7 points that he had set at the ISSF Junior World Cup in June.

South Korea’s Lim Honjin (243.1) finished second, ahead of Arjun (218.0).
Hojin had won the silver medal behind Saurabh in the June event as well. And on Thursday, the result didn’t change as the Indian gained the lead after a superb 10.9 with his eighth shot in the first competition stage.

From there on, he kept on increasing his lead. At the end of the first competition stage, Saurabh had 103.0, while Hojin had 102.1 and Arjun had 101.0.

In the second competition stage elimination round Saurabh continued to widen the gap against Hojin and Arjun. With more than a four-point lead after the seventh series, it was easy for Saurabh even though Hojin tried his best to erase the deficit.

Arjun exited the competition after the eighth series. At that juncture, Saurabh had 225.0, while Hojin had 222.4 as the two shooters went into the ninth and final round.

In the final round, Hojin came up with 10.0 and 10.7, while the Meerut boy shot 10.6 and 9.9 to seal the gold and shatter the world record by almost two points.

In the 10m air pistol team event, South Korea, comprising Hojin, Sung Yunho and Shin Okcheol, clinched the gold with a new junior world record of 1732 points.

India, comprising Saurabh, Arjun and Anmol, won the silver medal with 1730 points. Russia’s team of Alexander Petrov, Aleksandr Kondrashin and Anton Aristarkhov came third with 1711 points. Saurabh has so far won three medals at the championships. He had teamed up with Abhidnya Patil to win the junior 10m air pistol mixed team bronze on Tuesday.

India also picked up a silver medal in the junior men’s trap team competition, with Aman Ali Elahi, Vivaan Kapoor and Manavaditya Singh Rathore shooting a combined score of 348 to finish behind Australia.

Aman shot the best among the trio. He shot 118 in qualification and also overcome a four-man shoot-off to get to the six-man final. Aman ended sixth.