Shooting: Heena Sidhu confirms return to form with a golden double

Heena Sidhu 26New Delhi: Former world number one Heena Sidhu representing the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), confirmed a welcome return to form in the pre-Olympic year, when she bagged top honours in both the Women’s 10M Air Pistol individual and team events with high quality performances, at the XV Kumar Surendra Singh Memorial Shooting Championships, being held at the newly built Central Polytechnic Campus Shooting Range in Trivandrum, Kerala.

Heena, a Commonwealth Games Gold medalist, had been suffering some indifferent form since being anointed world number one in the 10M Air Pistol discipline in April last year, before shooting Gold at the recently concluded National Games with a high quality 200.8 score in the finals. She did an encore in the individual event today to signal that the National Games performance was not a one-off, before teaming up with Shweta Singh and Shilpi Bisht to win the Team event as well.

In other notable results of the day, Harpreet Singh of Haryana also continued his golden run from the National Games and won the Gold in the Men’s 25M Standard Pistol event with a score of 565 in the finals. He beat Rajesh Kumar of the Army in a shoot-off, while London 2012 Silver medalist Vijay Kumar bagged the bronze with a score of 564. This was Harpreet’s second Gold in two days of competition after having won the Rapid Fire Pistol event yesterday.

Vijay and his teammates Gurpreet Singh and Vijesh Kumar from the Army Marksmanship Unit however won the Gold in the 25M Standard Pistol Men’s Team event. They shot a total of 1675 in the finals, where the team from the Navy came second with a score of 1674 and Border Security Force (BSF) came third with a score of 1673.

In the Women’s 50M Rifle 3 Positions event, local girl Elizabeth Susan Koshy won the Gold with a final round score of 449 beating Anjum Moudgil of Haryana who won the Silver Medal shooting 447.1 and Lajja Gauswami of Gujarat, who came third finishing with a score of 435.8