Asian Championships: Sift Kaur Samra adds 3P gold to her cabinet

Asian Games champion Sift Kaur Samra added the Asian Championships gold to her cabinet after topping the women’s 50m rifle 3 Position podium in Shymkent, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday.Sift was seventh after the first 15 shots in the kneeling position.

She trailed the leader, Japan’s Nobata Misaki, by 4.1 points. However, the 23-year-old Indian raised her level in the next 15 shots of prone and climbed up to the fourth position.

She remained steady in the standing round elimination and hit a few high 10s (10.7, 10.8), which made up for the few 9s that came along.

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It wasn’t easy for Sift to stay calm as Chinese shooter Yujie Yang was breathing down her neck till the last shot, where she fell just 0.4 point behind for silver.Yujie took the lead from Sift in the 43rd shot as the Indian hit a 9.4, while the Chinese shot a 10.6, but in the next shot, an 8.7 by the Chinese brought Sift back in the first position. “It was windy during the qualification round so the scores couldn’t go very high but I think it was still decent. The final was challenging too. I would have been in trouble had she not hit that 8.7 in the 44th shot,” Sift told TOI. While the Chinese hit 8.7, Sift shot a 9.6 to regain the lead.

Earlier Sift had combined with Ashi Chouksey (586) and Anjum Moudgil (578) for the team gold in women’s 3P as well, with a tally of 1753, which was three clear of the Chinese team.In the junior women’s 50m rifle 3 position, Anuskha Thokur won gold with a comfortable 5-point lead in the final. Anuskha scored 460.7 for gold, while South Korea’s Sehee Oh was second with 455.7. The bronze too was taken by South Korea, as Yeojin Sim scored 443.9. India’s Mahit Sandhu was fifth (423) and Prachi Gaikwad finished sixth (413.9).In the junior women’s trap event, Sabeera Haris won gold (39), while Addya Katyal took silver (38) in a field that had only 10 shooters, six from Kazakhstan and four from India.