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What’s the story?
Indian shooter Anish Bhanwala won a gold medal at the ISSF Junior World Championship in the 25m Standard Pistol category, creating a junior world record.
The previous record was held by Denis Koulakov, who shot a score of 574 in a competition held in Finland in 2002. Anish broke the record with a score of 576 in three rounds
Anish had previously won a bronze medal at the Junior Men’s 25m Rapid Fire Pistol event at the 27th Meeting of the Shooting Hopes which concluded in May. India finished with a highly commendable tally of 11 medals from the renowned international shooting competition in the Rifle and Pistol disciplines.
In case you didn’t know...
This is the fourth consecutive year for Suhl as the host of the Junior International Shooting Sport competition, having previously hosted the ISSF Junior Cup in 2014 and 2015, and the ISSF Junior World Cup in 2016. In 2016, the city in Thuringia welcomed the ISSF World Championship Running Target competition.
The heart of the matter
The first junior competition of the year – ISSF Junior World Championship Rifle/Pistol in Germany has seen about 500 shooters participate from 65 different countries, collecting almost 1000 starts.
India have sent out a 31-strong contingent for the event. Indian shooter Subhankar Pramanic was one of the favourites to bag a medal on the first day as he had previously won a gold in the last Junior World Cup held in Gabala in the 50m Rifle Prone.
However, Subhankar failed to make it to the final round after an inconsistent start to the preliminary rounds. Fateh Singh Dhillon and Syed Araib Parvez were also other contenders, but they failed to make the final round as well.
In the 50m Rifle Prone Women Junior Individual Competition, Shirin Godara finished 21st in the preliminary round, followed by Prasiddhi Mahant in 41st place.
Among the big international stars is Istvan Peni of Hungary, who recently won a gold medal in the ISSF Senior World Cup in Gabala a couple of weeks back. This Junior Championship event is set to be the talented Hungarian Rifle shooter’s last Junior event.
What’s next?
Taking confidence from the tremendous performance of the junior shooters, the Indian contingent will take part in the ISSF Junior World Cup Shotgun in Italy from 15-22 Augustand the senior team will feature in the ISSF World Championship Shotgun in Moscow, Russia from 30 Aug–11 Sept.
Author’s take
It is always refreshing to see youngsters perform so well and Anish will look to build on this gold medal with more stellar performances in the future for India.
