India end best-ever World Cup campaign with 2 more gold

New Delhi: India pulled the curtains down on its best-ever ISSF World Cup campaign with two more gold medals here on Sunday, somewhat making up for missing out on the chance to swell its unprecedented tally of 15 Olympic quotas.

Dominating the event from start to end, hosts India topped the chart with an incredible tally of 30 medals, half of them being gold.

The country also bagged nine silver and six bronze medals in what could be the last major international outing for rifle and pistol shooters before this summer's Tokyo Olympics.

On the last competition day, shotgun shooters Prithviraj Tondaiman, Lakshay Sheoran and Kynan Chenai ended India's campaign with a gold medal in the men's trap team event.

Before that, the trio of Shreyasi Singh, Rajeshwari Kumari and Manisha Keer claimed the gold medal in the women's trap team final after blanking Kazakhstan 6-0.

In the gold medal match, the team fielded by the host nation did not break a sweat as it romped to a crushing win over Kazakhstan's Sarsenkul Rysbekova, Aizhan Dosmagambetova and Mariya Dmitriyenko, taking the number of gold won by India to 14 in the tournament.

Vijayveer Sidhu, Gurpreet Singh and Adarsh Singh looked off colour and settled for the silver medal in the men's 25m rapid fire pistol team event.

The USA's Keith Sanderson, Jack Hobson Leverett III and Henry Turner Leverett won the gold medal with a 10-2 victory over the home team.

"I had hoped that the home range would help me get my 16th quota... the cookie crumbled. But that boy (Vijayveer), he is very young and he shot very well... In the long run you will see a lot of good things from him," National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) president Raninder Singh said after the tournament.

The national shooting body's chief was satisfied with the performance of his athletes.

"Athletes morale is high, but, as I had said earlier this is not a marker for Olympics. But it's important that we have done well, because it leaves us morally high, these things matter, psychologically it's important for us.

"We have also set an example for rest of the shooting community so that they don't shy away from not hosting tournaments because of COVID-19. We are making sure that we will have regular international engagements that's why I was asked to conduct this first," Raninder said.

In the tournament's last event, the visitors led 2-0 at the start before the Indians came back to level the scores.