Jitu Rai wins gold in ISSF World Cup

New Delhi: Jitu Rai on Thursday won a gold medal in air pistol event at ISSF World Cup, Maribor, Slovenia. This is his second medal in this World Cup. He won a silver medal in free pistol event two days back.

Not only this, he won three medals back-to-back in two World Cups. He had won a silver medal in free pistol during ISSF World Cup held at Munich from 4th to 13th June 2014.


He shot an excellent score of 584/600 and was ranked third in the qualification round. He series scores are 98 98 97 98 97 96.


In the finals, he shot 200.8 and won the gold medal. The silver medalist, Carrera Pablo of Spain shot 198.7 in the final and bronze medal went to Gourianov Anto with a score of 177.2.


P N Prakash also reached the finals of this event. He was fourth in the qualification round with a total score of 581/600. In the finals he shot 137.4 and was ranked 5th.


NRAI president Raninder Singh congratulated Jitu Rai for his excellent achievement. He hoped that he would bring laurels for the country in the forthcoming Commonwealth Games, World Championship and Asian Games. He further said that his performance would inspire the young budding shooters.


Meanwhile, the junior air pistol shooters, who are participating in 2014 Meeting of Shooting Hope, Plzen, Czech Republic won gold and a silver medal individually. Shreya Gawande won gold and P Sri Nivetha won the silver medal. Both shot 385 and 382 respectively in qualification round. Shreya Gawande shot 200.5 and P Sri Nivetha 198.6 to clinch gold and silver medal respectively.


Yashwani Singh Deswal, although topped the ranking list in the qualification round with a score of 385/400 shot only 136.5 in finals and was ranked 5th.


In men’s air pistol event, Pershant Jakhar won a bronze medal. His score in qualification round was 572 and in finals, he shot 178.2 to win the bronze medal. The team of Pershant Jakhar (572), Sumedh Devlalivala (566) and Vishwajit Singh (564) won the silver medal in this event.