Shooting Trials: Olympian Sift Kaur Samra and Anish Bhanwala win trial 3

Olympians Anish Bhanwala and Sift Kaur Samra won the National Selection Trials (T3) in the 25m Rapid Fire Men and 50m 3 Positions Women events, respectively, which were held at the Trishul Shooting Range, Maharana Pratap Sports College in Dehradun.

Anish shot 33 in the finals, four better than his statemate Adarsh Singh, who finished in second place, while Navy’s Pradeep Singh Shekhawat took third place with a score of 23.

Earlier, Anish added 289 in Stage 2 of qualification after he had shot 293 in Stage 1 yesterday to qualify for the final in first place with a total of 582-21x. Pradeep finished in second with a score of 581-17x (290,291) while Gurmeet Singh finished third with a score of 579-15x (289,290).

Harsimar Singh Rattha (577-21x), Neeraj Kumar (576-16x), and Adarsh Singh (574-23x) completed the top six.

Sift Kaur Samra, who recently won bronze at the ISSF World Cup in Munich, showed her class in the 50m 3 Positions Women’s finals by finishing on top with a score of 467.3, which was 10.4 points better than Aaakriti Dahiya, who finished second with a score of 456.9.

Ashi Chouksey took the third spot with a score of 443.9 after she had finished on top in qualification with a score of 592, ahead of Sift, who shot 591. Aakriti shot 588 to finish third while Mehuli Ghosh (588), Ayushi Podder (587), Vidarsa K. Vinod (586), Vanshika Shah (585), and Nischal Singh (585) completed the top eight.

Umamahesh Maddineni edged past Rudrankksh

Junior World medalist Umamahesh Maddineni, who shot 252.2, edged Buenos Aires World Cup gold medalist Rudrankksh Patil, who finished with a score of 251.5, to secure the top spot. Divyansh Panwar took third spot with a score of 230.1.

Earlier in the qualification round, local boy Shourya Saini and Divyansh Panwar both shot 632.9, but the former finished on top, hitting more inner 10s.

17-year-old Parth Rakesh Mane finished in third with a score of 632.5 while Rudrankksh (631.9), Paarth Makhija (631.6), Umamahesh (630.9), Sandeep Singh (630.9), and Vishal Singh (630.7) completed the top eight.

The action will continue tomorrow with the qualification and finals of 10m Air Rifle Men T4, 25M Pistol Women T3, and 50m Rifle 3P Women T4, along with the 25m Rapid Fire Pistol Men T4 Stage 1 are scheduled.

These trials will help in shaping the Indian shooting team for the 16th Asian Shooting Championships 2025 in Kazakhstan in August and the ISSF World Cup in Ningbo, China, in September.