Kedarling Uchaganve leads Army 1-2 in men's air pistol at KSSM Shooting C'ship

Bhopal, May 4 (IANS) Army shooters took five of the top six positions as Kedarling Balakrishna Uchaganve struck gold, relegating teammate Ajay Kumar Ambawat to silver, with the Navy’s Ujjawal Malik’s bronze, preventing what would have been an Army medal sweep in the men’s 10m air pistol event of the on-going 23rd Kumar Surendra Singh Memorial (KSSM) Shooting Championship.

Taking aim here at the M.P. State Shooting Academy range Finals Hall on Saturday, both Kedarling and Ajay went into the final two shots of the 24-shot final tied at 223.6 and the latter even fired a perfect 10.9 on his 23rd to go 0.7 ahead.

However, a 9.6 put paid to his hopes as Kedarling finished with a strong 10.6 (244.4) under pressure to take the win by 0.3.There were 552 starts in the men’s air pistol.

Among those in the mix were Paris Olympics bronze medalist Sarabjot Singh, who shot a 579 to finish 18th while two other Army shooters, Ravinder Singh and Olympian Gurpreet Singh, back from representing India at the year’s first two Buenos Aires and Lima World Cup stages, also shot good scores of 583 and 581, respectively Ravinder finished sixth in the finals.

The junior title was won by Chandigarh’s Dhairya Prashar, who shot 241.6 in the final. Over 300 juniors competed in the qualifications. Sandeep Bishnoi of Rajasthan and Haryana’s Kapil won silver and bronze, respectively.

Dhairya also won the youth category silver in the event, going down to local favourite Yugpratap Singh Rathore in the final. Uttar Pradesh’s Chirag Sharma won bronze. The youth competition saw over 500 participate.

Earlier, reigning men's rifle 3-Positions national champion Kiran Ankush Jadhav of Navy won the 10m air rifle gold. Vivek Sharma (Army) took the silver while another Army shooter Vishal Singh bagged the bronze medal.

The Championship concludes on Monday.