Udhayveer's double gold sees India consolidate second place at Worlds

Cairo: India picked up three more gold medals to go with two bronze, including a double gold by Udhayveer Sidhu, to consolidate their second position in the ISSF World Championship here on Saturday.

Udhayveer won both the junior men's 25m and standard pistol titles while Esha Singh clinched the junior women's 25m pistol crown as India ended the day with four gold and three bronze medals to lie behind China who have eight gold and a total of 16 medals.

India has also picked up one Paris 2024 Olympics quota place after Rudrankksh Balasaheb Patil stunned a high-quality field on Friday to become the 10 air rifle men's world champion.

Udhayveer shot a combined score of 580 after the precision and rapid fire rounds in the junior men's sports pistol, to emerge on top of the 23-strong field. Italian Matteo Mastrovalerio was a point behind in second while China's Liu Yangpan won bronze with 577. In the standard pistol, he shot 568 across three stages to leave behind Yangpan, who this time settled for silver with 567.

India's Sameer also shot 567 but had to settle for bronze on countback. After finishing her qualification round in fourth place with a score of 581, Esha came second in her ranking match to make it to the final medal round. In the eight series of five rapid fire shots in each final, Esha shot a five and then four rounds of four hits each, to emerge the most consistent and seal the gold medal.

She eventually got 29 hits in the medal match to overcome China's Feng Sixuan who finished with 25. Miriam Jako of Hungary won bronze. After two silvers at the Lima Junior World Championships last year, this was her first junior

worlds crown.