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Shooting as a sport has seen an unprecedented rise in the recent times in India. The participation in the sport has increased manifold in the ground level, and as a result of that, the Indian junior shooters are beginning to dominate the world stage.
In the recently concluded Junior shooting World cup held at Suhl, Germany (June 22 to 29), India dominated every other country including China, the toppers at the previous versions of the world cup.
Among these young talents, some have already started winning medals in the senior category. The most notable among the young bunch, who are most likely to bring India laurels in the future are:
#1 Manu Bhaker
Manu Bhaker chose shooting just a couple of years ago. She is just 16 at the moment and has already made a world record by scoring 242.5 points in the Women's Junior 10m Air Pistol Finals.
Manu competed at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in the 10m Air Pistol category and won the prestigious Gold medal. She won it with an all-time game record in both the Qualifications (388) and the Finals(240.9). The event included participants from the top sporting countries like Australia, England, Canada and others.
Manu had won her first senior title at the World Cup held at Guadalajara, Mexico in March 2018, it announced her entry to the larger and tougher stage.
As per her coach Jaspal Rana, she is very tough mentally and that makes her a strong contender in the finals, where coping pressure is as important as the skill.
#2 Anish Bhanwala
The 15 year old from Haryana has already won a Commonwealth Games gold medal in the 25m Rapid Fire Pistol category, where he competed against shooters almost twice his age and still managed to create a commonwealth games finals record with the score of 30. He is the youngest Indian ever to win a Gold medal at the Commonwealth Games.
He had previously made a junior world record in 2017 at the event held in Suhl, Germany.
He is just 15 and has lot of scope for further improvement. The early exposure to the international stage has only strengthened him further.
#3 Elavenil Valarivan
Elavenil created a junior world record of 631.4 points (Qualifications) in the 10m Air Rifle women category at the 2018 Sydney Junior World Cup. Her score of 631.4 was higher than the senior world record at that time in the same category.
She won a gold at the ISSF junior world cup event held at Suhl, Germany in the individual round, while also securing a bronze for the team along with Mehuli Ghosh, Shreya Agrawal and Zeena Khitta.
#4 Saurabh Chaudhary
Saurabh holds the world record in the 10m Air Pistol junior men category, he shot a total of 243.7 points in the finals of the junior world cup held at Suhl, Germany. He broke the previous record of 242.5 by a margin of 1.2 points.
Saurabh topped the charts at the national trials held in November 2017 with an astonishing 244.3 points in the finals, while Omprakash Mitharwal, the top senior shooter finished second with a total of 239.1 points.
Saurabh's national trials qualifications score of 585 would have placed him second in the 2016 Olympics qualifications, while the score of 244.3 (in 24 shots) in the finals would have placed him higher than the gold medal winning 202.5 points(20 shots)
#5 Hriday Hazarika
Hriday scored 248.7 points at the ISSF junior World Cup in the 10m Air Rifle category to win the gold against the German Maximilian Ulbrich. He had topped the qualifications round with the score of 627.1 points.
