National Shooting Championships: Paris Olympics pair of Maheshwari/Anantjeet win Skeet mixed team title

New Delhi: The crack pair of Maheshwari Chauhan and Anantjeet Singh Naruka, who finished fourth in the Paris Olympics, rounded off a good year by bagging the Skeet Mixed Team national title for their home state Rajasthan in the ongoing 67th National Shooting Championship Competitions (NSCC) for Shotgun events, here on Wednesday.

In the final played at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range (DKSSR) on Christmas Day, the duo pulled off a tight at the end 44-43 victory over Mairaj Ahmad Khan and Areeba Khan of Uttar Pradesh (U.P). Punjab’s Ganemat Sekhon and Abhay Singh Sekhon won bronze.

Earlier in the day, three 25-shot round totals of 72 and 71 by Maheshwari and Anantjeet respectively, ensured their path to the gold medal match as toppers of the seven-team qualification round.

Three teams – Ganemat and Abhay and Haryana’s Ishaan Libra and Raiza Dhillon, besides Mairaj and Areeba, finished on the same tally of 141 after which the U.P duo won a three-way shoot-off by blasting eight targets on the trot, to earn a right to shoot for gold.

Maheshwari and Anantjeet shot a confident final and were leading throughout the six series of eight birds per team decider but lapses in concentration and a nerve-wracking caution to Maheshwari for overshooting her shot time, made it closer in the end than it actually was.

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In the junior skeet mixed team, it was Madhya Pradesh that stunned Haryana to bag gold, when their pairing of Jyotiraditya Singh and Mansi Raghuvanshi outgunned Ishaan and Sanjana Sood 4-2 in a shoot-off after both teams had tied at 40-hits a piece out of the regulation 48 targets.

Telangana’s Munek Battula and Zahra Deesawala won bronze, getting the better of Rajasthan’s Yaduraj Singh and Yashasvi Rathore 42-36 in the bronze medal match.