Shooting: Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar wins Men's Air Rifle T2 trial

New Delhi/Bhopal, March 17

After missing out narrowly in his earlier attempts, local favourite Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar finally struck gold at the on-going National Shooting trials, winning the Men's 10M Air Rifle T2 competition on Thursday.

Taking aim on day 10 of competitions at Bhopal's M.P. Shooting Academy range, Tomar, who had earlier won silver in the Men's 50M Rifle 3 Positions (3P) T1 trial, overcame fellow Olympian and Air Force man Deepak Kumar 17-11, in a keenly contested gold medal match.

Senior shooter Deepak Kumar shot 631.6 to finish third in qualifications, while Aishwary finished a spot behind with 629.9. They met again in the four-man bronze medal round after coming through their semi-finals, where Deepak again topped the table with 42.5 to Tomar's 40.5, setting up the gold medal clash where the latter turned the tables on the former.

Maddineni Umamahesh of Andhra also had a good day, making it to the final stages of the senior event as well as winning the Junior Men's 10M Air Rifle T2 trials with a 17-9 win over Madhya Pradesh's Avinash Yadav.

Over 3300 Shooters, including all top Shooters of the country, are participating in the year's first National trials in Bhopal, after they had to be postponed from January this year, because of the raging pandemic.

Indian teams for the upcoming World Cup in Baku and Junior World Cup in Suhl are to be selected on the basis of these trials.