New Delhi: Shri Kiren Rijiju, Minister of State (I/C) for Youth Affairs and Sports today met here the members of the Indian shooting team that returned from the recently-concluded ISSF Rifle and Pistol World Cup in Rio De Janeiro. He congratulated the shooters for their outstanding display at the event where India topped the medal tally with five golds, two silver and two bronze medals. The shooters present at the gathering were Apurvi Chandela, Anjum Moudgil, Elavenil Valarivan, Manu Bhaker, Yashaswini Deswal, Sanjeev Rajput, Abhishek Verma and Deepak Kumar. Shri Raninder Singh, President, National Rifles Association of India and coaches Jaspal Rana, Pavel Smirnov and Oleg Mikhailov were also present on the occasion.
India has had a brilliant year in Shooting and have 16 golds, 4 silver and 2 bronze medals across all ISSF Senior World Cups in 2019, all in Rifle and Pistol events. Of these 22 medals, 12 have come in individual events and 10 have come in the mixed team events for 10m Air Rifle and 10m Air Pistol. India has so far won nine quotas in Shooting for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, with Sanjeev Rajput in Men’s 50m Rifle 3 Position and Yashaswini Deswal in Women’s 10m Air Pistol, earning quotas at the Rio World Cup.
Congratulating the Indian shooting contingent the minister said, “The Indian team has performed very well in shooting and we will be sending a very strong contingent to the Tokyo Olympics. This is a sport from which India has very high hopes.”
