Indian shooters finish second in Junior World Cup

Lakshaya and Kismat Chopra along with Manavaditya Singh Rathore on Thursday bagged the team bronze in the Men's Trap event as India ended their campaign at the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) Junior World Cup with a total of 24 medals to grab the second place in the overall standings.

India finished with a total of nine gold, five silver and 10 bronze medals as the year's second and final Junior World Cup concluded in Gabala, Azerbaijan.

Manavaditya, qualified for the individual Bronze medal match-up in the event, being part of two shoot-offs in the lead up, but had to be contended with fourth place eventually, coming second-best to Italy's Matteo Marongiu.

Lakshaya and Kismat and Manavaditya bagged the team Bronze in the Men's Trap when together they shot a total of 347 out of the possible 375 hits. Italy shot 360 to win Gold while Australia finished a point ahead of India to claim Silver.

Earlier both Manavaditya and Lakshaya were tied in fifth place, with two other shooters on a score of 118 at the end of the qualifying round of 125 shots each. Only six shooters qualify for the final rounds.

In the ensuing shoot-off Manavaditya and a Chinese shooter, Chengjiang Liu, were on target with their first two shots and qualified.

Lakshaya missed his second and the other Kazakh shooter, Nikolay Belskiy, missed his first, to be placed seventh and eighth respectively.

In the Semi-finals, Manavaditya was again tied with four others, including eventual Gold medalist, Australia's Jack Wallace, to even have a shot at the Gold medal match.

Russia topped the medal standings with 12 Golds for the total of 25 medals. A total of 18 countries won medals at the competition.

The ISSF bandwagon now moves to Italy, where the Senior World Cup Finals, the season ending competition of the year's best shooters in every discipline, are scheduled early next month.

India will have three shooters, Jitu Rai, Mairaj Ahmad Khan and Sanjeev Rajput participating in the event. 

IMAGE: Manavaditya is son of Olympic silver medallist Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore