Sagar Dangi wins two medals in ISSF World Championship

Sagar Dangi turned out to be the star for India, bagging gold and silver in the junior men’s 10m Air Pol team and individual events at the ISSF World Championship Rifle/Pol.
In a day of mixed fortunes, India picked up four more medals, including one gold, at the end of day nine of competitions. India now have a tally of 30 medals 11 gold, seven silver and 12 bronze and sits comfortably behind China in second place in the standings. A Paris Olympics quota eluded Anjum Moudgil as she finished sixth in the women’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions event. But, her first-round performance in women’s 25m Pol and men’s 3P held out hope for more.
Dangi (silver) and Varun Tomar (bronze) in the junior men’s 10m Air Pol, Nancy and Sri Karthik Sabari Raj Ravishankar (bronze) in the 10m Air Rifle junior Mixed Team and Dangi, Tomar and Samrat Rana gold in the men’s 10m Air Pol Junior Team event fetched medals for India on Friday.
After winning silver and bronze in the individual events, Dangi and Tomar teamed up with Samrat Rana in the team competition to comfortably top qualification stage one with a score of 867 and then the subsequent top eight stage with 577 to make it to the gold medal match against Uzbekan, comprising Mukhammad Kamalov, Ilkhombek Obidjonov and Veniamin Nikitin.
The Indian trio took a quick 6-0 lead in the final and barring a blip Tomar in the fourth series, Rana in the sixth, both of them in the eighth and Dangi himself in the 10th, the Indians proved far too consent collectively to emerge winners 16-8 margin.

Earlier in the individual event, Dangi had gone down 12-16 in yet another India-China gold medal clash, this time to Gao Jinkang in a close duel. Dangi and Tomar made it an India 1-2 in qualifications early in the morning with scores of 588 and 583 from the 60-shot round. They then got off to a strong start in the ranking round with Dangi leading after five shots and Tomar lying second. But the end of the 20th shot, Gao had taken the lead.
With Italian Matteo Mastrovalerio having a poor fifth series, Tomar managed to secure his bronze and Dangi went into the gold medal match against the Chinese.
In the final race to 16 points and the junior world champion title, Dangi took a 4-2 lead in the early stages, but Gao hit back to open up a 8-4 lead. Dangi then tied the scores at 10-10 with Gao hitting three consecutive 9s. However, it was 14-10 again in favour of Gao soon and despite the Indian winning one more series, he had to settle for silver.
In the women’s 3P, two other Indians — Ashi Chouksey and Sift Kaur Samra finished 33rd and 53rd with scores of 582 and 577 respectively. Miao Wanru of China won gold in the event while Norway bagged two of the remaining three Paris quotas with USA taking the other.