Key Points

This was the former junior world champion’s second career individual gold at the continental championship to go with a silver and bronze each. China’s Zhaon Wenyu won silver and Japan’s Naoya Okada won bronze. Also winning the junior men’s 3P gold was India’s Adriyan Karmakar with an Asian junior record effort of 463.8 in the final.

Earlier, all three Indian contenders in the men’s 3P made the finals with Aishwary qualifying highest in third with a tally of 584 over 20 shots each in the Kneeling, Prone and Standing positions.

The seasoned Chain Singh was fifth in the pecking order with an effort of 582 while world championship bronze medalist Akhil Sheoran, rallied brilliantly to clinch the seventh qualifying spot with a 581. China's all three shooters also qualified with the other two spots going to Japan and Korea respectively.

The team gold eluded India by three points as their tally of 1747 fell three short of the Chinese total.

Aishwary then bossed it in the individual final, taking a healthy lead after the first five shots of the first Kneeling position itself and then going from strength to strength to bag gold, leaving Zhao 0.5 short in the end.

The closest the two came was after the 13th shot when they were just 0.3 apart, but a 10.8 by Aishwary for his 14th got him back to an above one-point advantage, which was enough in the end.

Japan’s Naoya Okada (448.8) took bronze, as Chain (435.7) and Akhil (424.9) settled for fourth and fifth, respectively.

In the junior men’s 3P, Vedant Waghmare took second in qualifying with a 582 while Adriyan Karmakar took the eighth and final qualifying spot with a 576, while Sami Ullah Khan (575), Rohit Kanyan (575), Gaurav Desale (569) and Hitesh Srinivasan (564) all finished outside the qualifying spots.

The trio of Vedant, Adriyan and Rohit bagged the team gold with a combined tally of 1733.

In the individual final, it was Adriyan who started strongest in the eight-pack, taking a lead of 0.9 from China’s Han Yinan after 15 shots of the first Kneeling position. Vedant was lying sixth at this stage.

By the end of 10 shots in the second Prone position, however, Vedant had caught up and was trailing his compatriot by 0.4, but Adriyan posted a strong final series to extend the lead to 1.4 going into the final Standing position. Host shooter Oleg Noskov was 0.8 behind Vedant.

A tough first series of 48.6 in Standing then saw Vedant lose spot to Oleg momentarily, but he again made up lost ground. Adriyan, meanwhile, was soldiering on merrily and was 3.2 ahead of his teammate after 40 shots.

A fantastic late surge by Han, saw him displace Vedant for silver over the last five shots, but Adriyan was not to be deterred as he shot scores of 10.8, 10.2,10.4,10.5 and 10.5 for a first junior continental title with an Asian junior record to boot.

Till last count, India with 25 gold, 10 silver and 10 bronze medals were sitting pretty on top of the medal tally with China a distant second on 10 golds.

- IANS