ISSF World Cup Finals: China dominate Day 1, India’s Sonam Maskar wins Silver
Team China continues their terrific run from Paris Olympics 2024 at the ISSF World Cup Finals and India's Sonam Maskar took home Silver
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The winners of ISSF World Cup Final (Image via Open Source/X)
The 2024 ISSF World Cup Final competitions commenced in earnest on Tuesday with air-gun events. The season-ending tournament in Rifle, Pistol, and Shotgun is being held in New Delhi for the first time since 2017.
China won three of the first four Golds on offer in Delhi, continuing from where the nation’s 2024 Olympic campaign had ended. India meanwhile finished with a Silver and two near misses in what was also almost a Paris 2024 replay for the host nation.
Women’s 10m Air Rifle
The 2024 WCFs began on a high-scoring note with new World Records being set in Women’s 10m AR. First, German Anna Janssen set a new Qualification World Record of 636.9. Next, China’s Huang Yuting (Qualification score 633.3) was in scintillating form, churning out 10.9s on the way to a Gold with a new Finals World Record of 254.5.
India’s Sonam Uttam Maskar (632.1) won a creditable Silver with 252.9, a score that would have been good enough for Gold on another day.
Sonam did well to fend off competition from Olympic finalists Oceanne Muller (634.0) of France who finished third, Eunji Kwon (631.2) of South Korea who was fourth and the previous WR holder Han Jiayu (631.4) of China who was fifth.
Particularly impressive was a 10.7 and 10.9 from Sonam Maskar in a high-pressure situation in the 7th series that ensured the Indian of a medal. The Paris 2024 Silver medalist Yuting led from start to finish and was never really challenged by the field.
The second Indian to qualify was Tilottama Sen (628.9) who was sixth, Janssen was seventh and Misaki Nobata (628.1) of Japan was the first to be eliminated. Olympic Bronze medalist Audrey Gogniat, Olympic Silver winner in Mixed AR Keum Jihyeon and last year’s WCF winner Aneta Stankiewicz were the shooters who failed to qualify.
Men’s 10m Air Rifle
The freakishly gifted 19-year-old Chinese prodigy Sheng Lihao added another Gold medal to a collection that already includes several Olympic, World Championship, and Asian Games medals.
Sheng (631.6), the reigning Olympic Champion, finished with a score of 251.4 and successfully dealt with the challenge first posed by India’s Arjun Babuta (631.6), who was in the lead for the first half of the match but ended up fifth, and later from Hungarian Istvan Peni (629.2) who finished second with 251.3, just 0.1 points behind Sheng. The Czech Jiri Privratsky (631.3) won Bronze.
From an Indian perspective, this match will raise further questions about Arjun Babuta’s big-match temperament. Babuta was well in the lead till shot 15 and still going neck-to-neck in second place with Sheng before a 9.8 in the 18th shot led to him being eliminated fifth. He had finished fourth in the Paris Olympics under similar circumstances.
If Sonam Maskar set the template for dealing with crunch situations, Babuta gave a lesson on how not to handle such scenarios. He will have to consciously work on this aspect.
Another Indian Divyansh Singh Panwar (631.2) finished eighth after qualifying. Other finalists were Austria’s Martin Strempfl (630.4) who was fourth, the Olympic finalist Danilo Sollazzo (633.8) of Italy who was sixth and Du Linshu (629.2) of China who finished seventh. Zalan Pekler and Lazar Kovacevic, who won Gold and Silver respectively at the WCF last year in Doha, failed to qualify this time.
Women’s 10m Air Pistol
The dreaded fourth place came to haunt India again as Rhythm Sangwan, who was in Bronze medal position and 1.8 points ahead of Egypt’s Hala Elgohari (571-16x), shot an 8.0 in her 19th shot against Hala’s 10.4 to bow out of the podium reckoning.
It should be noted that Rhythm, like Arjun Babuta, also has had issues in handling pressure situations in the past and these came to the forefront yet again.
The Gold was won by France’s Camille Jedrzejewski (575-17x) who led virtually from start to finish and looked visibly ecstatic as she shot a 10.9 as her last shot to end up with a Final score of 240.8. This was her second WCF title in Women’s 10m AP, having previously won in 2022. Taipei’s Liu Heng Yu (571-13x) was rewarded with the Silver after some consistent and determined shooting.
Rhythm (579-18x) topped the Qualifications and had made a strong comeback in the Final after being last at the end of the first 10 shots before eventually finishing fourth. Surbhi Rao (574-13x) was the other Indian in the Final and finished fifth.
The field included Chinese Olympic finalists Jiang Ranxin (577-18x) who finished sixth, Li Xue (567-15x) who was seventh and Sevval Illayda Tarhan (563-10x) of Turkey who failed to qualify as well as Nigar Nasirova (568-13x) of Azerbaijan who was eighth.
Men’s 10m Air Pistol
Paris Olympic champion Xie Yu of China once again showcased his class to win Gold amidst a field that featured a number of Olympic finalists.
#Paris2024 and World Cup 10m Air Pistol Men gold medalist Xie Yu 🇨🇳 is one of the athletes nominated for #ISSF Athlete of the Year. pic.twitter.com/lSXfXxcRXr
— ISSF (@issf_official) October 12, 2024
Germany’s Robin Walter (579-19x), the 2023 WCF winner, was leading for much of the match but shot a number of 9s after the 20th shot against Xie’s consecutive 10s to hand the latter the advantage. Xie finished with a score of 244.6 against Walter’s 243.3.
The 2024 Olympic Silver medalist Federico Maldini (579-27x) of Italy who finished third was always behind the top two throughout the match.
Xie had also topped the Qualifications with an impressive 588-25x.
Other finalists were the Olympic Bronze medalist Paolo Monna (581-23x) of Italy who was fourth, Bulgaria’s Samuil Donkov (578-18x) who was in medal contention in the early stages but faded away to fifth, the Olympic fourth-finisher Lee Wonho (581-23x) from South Korea who was sixth and Bugra Selimzade (581-24x) of Turkey who finished seventh.
India’s Arjun Singh Cheema (580-18x) started off with a 7.1 and at this level amid such intense competition it is difficult to recover from such a poor first shot and Cheema made no attempts to comeback with 10s either. He was well behind the field and was the first to be eliminated. 2016 Olympic finalist Juraj Tuzinsky, viral internet sensation Yusuf Dikec, Lauris Strautmanis and India’s Varun Tomar were the shooters who did not qualify.
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