India’s teenage 10m air rifle shooter Rudrankksh Balasaheb Patil crowned world champion in Egypt, wins Paris Olympic Games quota place

India’s Rudrankksh Balasaheb Patil is the new men’s 10m air rifle world champion. The promising teenager also won the Paris 2024 Olympic Games quota place at the Cairo International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Shooting Championship in Egypt on Friday.

India’s first individual Olympic gold medallist, Abhinav Bindra, became world champion in men’s air rifle in Zagreb in 2006.

According to information received so far, the 18-year-old Indian topped the qualification round with a score of 633.9 points. The top eight shooters progressed to the final round.

In the gold medal contest, steady shooting enabled Patil to outclass Italian Danilo Dennis Sollazzo 17-13 to win gold and a second Olympic quota place for India.

Trap shooter Bhowneesh Mendiratta won the Paris Olympic Games quota place in World Shotgun Championship held recently in Croatia. The Olympic Games quota places are for India and not individual shooters.

The two other Indian shooters in the men’s 10m air rifle competition weren’t impressive. While Arjun Babuta couldn’t make the cut for the eight-shooter final, Kiran Jadhav finished eighth in the medal round.

A silver medallist at the Junior World Championships in Lima last year and a gold medallist at the Junior World Cup in Suhl earlier this year, Rudrankksh secured his first medal at the senior level with his heroics in Cairo. He broke through to the senior squad at the start of the year and had registered seventh and 11th-place finishes in the Baku and Cairo World Cups, respectively, earlier.

India’s junior shooters, meanwhile, continued to impress as Udhayveer Sidhu and Esha Singh finished on top of the pile after the first qualification round in the 25m pistol men and women’s events, respectively. Udhayveer shot 290 in the first precision round while Esha shot 294.

In the 50m rifle prone mixed team, the pair of Nishchal and Surya Pratap Singh went down 6-16 in a bronze medal match to USA’s Katie Zaun and Rylan Kissell.

The World Shooting Championship is an opportunity for teams from Asia, Africa, America, and Australia to win Olympic Games quotas places in 10 Olympic events.

More than 1000 athletes from 88 countries are competing in the Egyptian World Shooting Championship in the rifle and pistol events.