Saurabh wins World Cup bronze on return, Varun fourth
Saurabh Chaudhary won bronze in the 10m air pistol at the ISSF World Cup in Lima, while cousin Varun Tomar finished fourth.
New Delhi: Young 10m air pistol shooter Saurabh Chaudhary, back in the national team after almost two years, marked his steady rise with a bronze medal while his cousin Varun Tomar finished fourth in the final on the first competition day of the ISSF Shooting World Cup in Lima, Peru on Tuesday.
Saurabh, 22, still some way off the nerveless shooter that he was a few seasons ago, shot 219.1 to finish behind China’s Kai Hu (246.4) and Brazil’s Felipe Almeida Wu (241) in the eight-man field that also featured China’s world No.1 and Paris Games gold medallist Yu Xie. His last individual World Cup medal was at the Cairo World Cup in 2022 where he had won gold.
Saurabh, who was second after the first competition series, slipped to fifth position in Series 3 and 4 but a 10.2 and 10.6 in the next sequence pushed him to the second spot. Despite not being able to hit inner-10s, Saurabh did just enough to keep his place in the top three and ended the second World Cup of the year with a medal. Saurabh won the mixed team bronze with Suruchi Phogat at the World Cup in Buenos Aires last week.
Paris Olympian Tomar slipped out of medal contention after 16 shots following ordinary shots of 9.1 and 9.7. China’s 23-year-old Kai Hu stole the show with his consistent shooting, taking the top spot after the first series of 10 shots and holding it till the end. Coming off a gold medal from the Buenos Aires World Cup, Hu missed the world record (246.5) by 0.1 point, after a sub-par 9.3, his penultimate hit of the contest.
Indian shooters won three medals at last year’s Paris Olympics, all bronze.
