Shooting Worlds: Udhayveer's twin strike keeps India in 2nd

India picked up three more gold medals to go with two bronze, including a double gold by Udhayveer Sidhu, to consolidate their second position at the ISSF World Championship in Cairo, on Saturday.

Udhayveer won both, the junior men's 25m and standard pistol titles while Esha Singh clinched the junior women's 25m pistol crown, as India ended the day with four gold and three bronze medals, behind China who have eight gold out of a total 16 medals.

India has also picked up one Paris 2024 Olympics quota place after Rudrankksh Balasaheb Patil stunned a high-quality field on Friday, to become the 10 air rifle men's world champion.

Udhayveer shot a combined score of 580 after the precision and rapid-fire rounds in the junior men's sports pistol, to emerge on top of the 23-strong field.

Italian Matteo Mastrovalerio was a point behind in second while China's Liu Yangpan won bronze with 577. In the standard pistol, he shot 568 across three stages to leave behind Yangpan, who this time settled for silver with 567. India's Sameer also shot 567 but had to settle for bronze on countback.

After finishing her qualification round in fourth place with a score of 581, Esha came second in her ranking match to make it to the final medal round. In the eighth series of five rapid-fire shots in each final, Esha shot a five, and then four rounds of four hits each, to emerge the most consistent and seal the gold medal.

She eventually got 29 hits in the medal match to overcome China's Feng Sixuan who finished with 25. Miriam Jako of Hungary won the bronze. After two silvers at the Lima Junior World Championships last year, this was her first junior world crown.

India's second bronze of the day came from Tejaswini in the junior women's 25m standard pistol after she shot 557 to finish behind Chinese athletes. Manvi Jain was fifth with 556 and Payal Khatri was eighth with 547.

In the two Paris quota events of the day, India's Shiva Narwal finished eighth in the men's 10m air pistol. He shot 583 to qualify in sixth place for the ranking match, but could not make much headway thereafter, and was among the first to be eliminated on a score of 147.6.

Naveen was unfortunate to miss out on a top-eight spot after finishing in ninth place with 582. Two other shooters qualified on the same score but Naveen lost out on lesser inner 10s. Vijayveer Sidhu shot 579 to finish 19th overall.

India also missed out in the women's 10m air pistol when Rhythm Sangwan finished 17th in qualification, with a score of 576. The final qualifying spot went at 580. Yuvika Tomar shot 574 to finish 25th while Palak was further back in the 50th position with 568.

In other results, India's Sartaj Tiwana finished eighth in the junior men's 50m rifle 3 positions event with a score of 297.7 in the ranking match. He had qualified seventh on Friday with a score of 580.

In the junior women's 3P, none of India's three competitors made it beyond the qualification stage, with Nishchal finishing best in the 29th spot and Nikita Kundu a step lower on 30. Both shot scores of 576. Nupur Kumrawat was 51st with 566.