Anjali, Jaspal continue gold hunt

Jaspal Rana and Anjali Vedpathak continued to excel in the fourth Commonwealth shooting championships in Bisley, England, with gold medal-winning performances on the penultimate day of the competition on Thursday.

Rana, who had won two gold medals in the team events earlier in the competition, won the Standard Pistol event while Anjali set a new championship record on way to her second individual gold.

India, on Thursday, won two gold, one silver and three bronze medals, to take their tally to 12 gold, five silver and six bronze medals with a day of competition remaining.

India are at the top of the medal tally, national coach Prof Sunny Thomas informed from Bisley.

Anjali, who had won the Air Rifle event on Wednesday, shot a personal best score of 582 in the qualification rounds to march into the final of the Rifle 3 Position on Thursday. She fired 94.2 in the final to take the gold with a combined tally of 676.2 points.

Kuheli Ganguly won the bronze in the event with 665 (573+92) points while Anuja Tere tallied 663.8 (568+95.8) for the fourth spot. The silver medal in the event was taken by S Mccready of Australia with 670.6 (575+95.6) points.

In the men's Standard Pistol event, Jaspal Rana fired a 568 out of 600 to take the top spot. Naresh Kumar won the bronze with a score of 562 while Vivek Singh stood fourth with 560 points. The silver medal went to Linda Ryan, an Australian woman participating in the men's event, who shot 564.

Jaspal and Naresh had earlier combined in the Centrefire Pistol and Standard Pistol team events to win gold medals for India.

In the Rapidfire Pistol event, Poonam Kumar won the silver with 666.5 points. Poonam was in joint lead with 574 points in the qualification rounds but his 92.5 was not enough to win the gold which was taken by M Icorov of Canada. Icorov followed up his 574 in qualification round with 96 in the final.

Mukesh Kumar, who had combined with Poonam to win the team event of Rapidfire Pistol, won a bronze with 660.3 (569+91.3). Raunak Pandit shot an impressive 97.3 in the final but he had to settle for the fourth spot because of his score in the qualification round (561).