On Saturday, April 27, India’s Abhishek Verma won gold in the 10m air pistol event after shooting a score of 242.7 in the final at the ISSF World Cup. His medal secured India’s fifth Olympic quota place in shooting at next year’s Tokyo Olympics. Following Abhishek Verma, Artem Chernousov from Russia won silver with a total of 240.4, while on the other hand, South Korea’s Seungwoo Han won bronze medal, he finished with 220.0 scores in the final.
Verma had completed fourth in the qualification round with a score of 585. The other Indians in action such as Shahzar Rizvi (576) as well as Arjun Singh Cheema (571) finished 32nd and 54th individually.
Shooting in his first International Shooting Sport Federation World Cup final, the Indian led the field all through the men’s 10m air pistol final to finalize the top spot with a total score of 242.7.
Verma is also a lawyer by profession, took up this sport just four years ago at a shooting range in Hissar, Haryana. He is currently the fourth Indian man to have won gold in the 10m air pistol event at a World Cup after Jitu Rai (2014) from Maribor, Rizvi (2018) from Guadalajara and Chaudhary (2019) from New Delhi.
This is first medal of 29 year old Verma at a World Cup. He was making his second senior World Cup arrival, having ended 24th in his debut at the New Delhi event in the month of February. He has also won silver at the Asian Championships in Taoyuan which was held earlier in the year. In the year 2018, Verma also won bronze at the Asian Games and ended eighth at the World Championships.
In order to qualify for the final at the fourth spot in Chinese capital on Saturday, Verma shot a total number of 585 points. He was the only Indian who proceeded to the final with Shahzar Rizvi and Arjun Singh Cheema ending up at 32nd and 54th correspondingly.
Verma, who had won a bronze medal in the 10m air pistol event for the duration of his India debut at the Asian Games, does not have much international experience, making the achievement even after that makes it more commendable.
Also, Rajasthan’s 17-year-old teenager Divyansh Singh Panwar on Friday also secured India’s fourth Olympic quota position by winning silver in 10m air rifle event.
In the meantime, this is fifth 2020 Tokyo Olympic quota of India after Anjum Moudgil and Apurvi Chandela in 10m air rifle women and Saurabh Choudhary in 10m Air Pistol men as well as Divyansh had secured berths in the previous World Cups and last year’s World Championship.
Saurabh Chaudhary was pick up in the MQS category previously in the day to increase the probabilities of an additional Olympic quota place for India.
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