Mairaj Khan created history; Winning India’s first World Cup gold in skeet

Mairaj Khan created history by winning India’s maiden World Cup gold in men’s skeet on Monday. The veteran Indian shooter scored 37 points to stay ahead of Korea’s Minsu Kim (36) and Britain’s Ben Llewellyn (26), who won silver and bronze respectively. Khan scored 119/125 on two days of qualifying before coming into a five-way shoot-off on his way to his first individual gold.

The two-time Olympian, who is the oldest member of the Indian contingent in Changwon this year, won a silver medal at the 2016 World Cup in Rio de Janeiro. Earlier in the day, the trio of Anjum Moudgil, Aashi Chouksey and Sift Kaur Samra won the bronze medal in the women’s 50m Rifle 3P team event.

The Indians beat the Austrian team of Sheelan Weibel, Nadine Ungerrank and Rebecca Koeck 16-6 in the bronze medal match to secure a comfortable podium finish.

But that day undoubtedly belonged to Khan. After finishing with 119, he found himself competing for the two final qualification places along with four others, including two-time Olympic medalist Abdullah Al Rashidi of Kuwait. When Japan’s Shotaro Toguchi missed his eighth shoot-off shot, he was assured a top-eight spot.

In the ranking round, he was up against German Sven Korte, Korean Minky Cho and Cypriot Nichols for another round of 30 goals. He topped the round with 27 hits as Sven followed him into the medal round with 25 hits.

In other results, Vijayveer Sidhu made it to the ranking round but failed to advance to the medal round, while Anish and Sameer could not cross the first hurdle in the men’s 25m rapid fire pistol. Vijayveer finished sixth in qualifying with 584 points, while Anish scored 582 for 12th and Sameer scored 566 for 30th.

Mufaddal Deesawala finished 23rd in women’s skeet shooting with a total of 108 points. So far, India is at the top of the medal tally with five gold medals, as many silvers and three bronze medals.

(Inputs PTI)