Abhinav Shaw clinches junior men’s 10m air rifle gold at Asian Championships

Pune: It was a rollercoaster qualification round for Abhinav Shaw in the junior men's 10m air rifle event at the 16th Asian Championships in Shymkent, Kazakhstan, on Thursday. However, the young shooter finished on a high and clinched gold in a tense final. Abhinav scored 250.4 in the final to finish on top but only by 0.1 point, ahead of Korea's Hyunseo Lee. The bronze went to China's Sihan Ma with a score of 229.2. Abhinav didn't shoot a great score for his eighth place qualification for the final, but the 17-year-old cleared his mind just in time. The Kolkata shooter began the qualification round with an impressive series of 105.0, followed by 105.2, but the next three series of 10 shots each – 103.3, 104.8 and 103.3 – pushed him down in the ranking. A push on the pedal in the last series saw him shooting 106.5 and barely making it to the top-8. “After first two good series, I got conscious – of my process, my scores, everything – and I got confused. But by the last series, I could gather myself and bring back to my process,” said Abhinav, who was named after his namesake, Abhinav Bindra. Meanwhile, Mansi Raghuwanshi and Yashasvi Rathore won gold and silver in the junior women skeet final. In the junior men's skeet event, Harmehar Singh (52) took silver, while Jyotiraditya Singh Sisodiya (43) won bronze, in a field of 15 shooters from only four countries.