India won their fourth gold medal of the ongoing Shooting World in Cairo as Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar outplayed Austria's Alexander Schmirl 16-6 in the men's 50m rifle 3 positions final on Wednesday.
It was his third individual World Cup gold and consolidated India's spot on top of the medal tally. India now has four golds and two bronze medals, with Hungary in second with two golds and a silver.
Aishwary first topped the qualification round with a score of 588 after 20-shots each in the Kneeling, Prone and Standing positions. He had teammate Akhil Sheoran for company in the ranking round, who was second in qualification with 587.
In the ranking round, they started slow with Aishwary sixth and Akhil eighth after the first five kneeling shots. After the end of the allocated 10-shots in the second prone position however, both had moved up with Akhil in second and Aishwary up to fifth. Austrian Schmirl was leading the match and did so till the end of the ranking round.
However, after the first five standing position shots, Aishwary got up to second, just 0.5 behind Schmirl while Akhil was down to fifth and eventually bowed out in seventh place after 30-shots. In the gold medal match, which is basically a race to 16 points with two points to the winner of each single-shot series, Aishwary took the first series. However it remained tight with match scores reading 4-4 and then 6-6 before the Indian broke away with some sensational shooting to close out the match.
Rhythm finishes outside medals
In the day's first medal event, India's Rhythm Sangwan, who had qualified for the ranking rounds after shooting a total of 589 in the women's 25m pistol, could not make the final four medal round. She had shot 295 to lead the first precision round on Tuesday and then shot 294 in the rapid-fire round to qualify second behind Doreen Vennekamp of Germany.
She then bowed out in the second ranking round match finishing fourth with nine hits out of 20. Hungary's Veronika Major won gold in the event.
Manu Bhaker and Esha Singh, the two other Indian contenders shot 571 and 570 to finish 32nd and 34th respectively.
Two other Indians, Niveditha Nair and Abhidnya Ashok Patil, playing for ranking points only, shot scores of 583 and 582 respectively.