The 20-year-old from Karnal has emerged India’s new shooting sensation after his historic showing in ISSF World Championships
Indian shooter Samrat Rana, all of 20, made history on Monday becoming a world champion in 10m air pistol outclassing a world class field in Cairo. Paris Olympian Varun Tomar made it more special by winning bronze in the same event.
This is the first time that an Indian pistol shooter will don the tag of a world champion in an Olympic discipline. And it is incredible that the extraordinary feat was achieved by a young shooter competing in his maiden world championships.
Senior team
In fact, Rana has made it to the senior national team only this year after beating some of India’s top shooters, including Saurabh Chaudhary, in domestic trials. In his first international competition at ISSF World Cup in Ningbo, Rana had finished fifth. But he came out all guns blazing on Monday at the ISSF World Championships in Cairo, first topping the qualification, and then beating Chinese Hu Kai, who has been undefeated this season, in an intense high-quality final. It was also the first time that India had a double podium in any Olympic discipline at an ISSF World Championship.
College student
Rana, who hails from Karnal, Haryana and is a third-year student at the Kurukshetra University, scored 243.7 in the 24-shot final. Hu was 0.4 points behind and settled for silver. Tomar also had an outstanding final and was even leading at one point but eventually finished with bronze (221.7).
Rana was simply unstoppable and displayed bold, fearless shooting in high pressure moments. Hu, who has swept through all the four ISSF World Cup titles this season, competed hard with Rana in the battle for the world title but it was not his day.
Exciting final
In a tense final where Rana and Hu exchanged lead on a number of occasions, the Indian was steady in the deciding final few shots. Rana was 0.6 points ahead of Hu and needed a 10.3 in his last shot to win the title. He fired a 10.6 to leave the Indian fans delighted.
The likes of Olympic and world champion Christian Reitz, Paris Olympics silver medallist Federico Maldini were competing in the final but Rana stole the show with a performance for the ages.
“I still can’t believe that I have won the title,” said Rana. “This was the first time I was competing in a world championship and in a final and to win here is unbelievable,” said Rana after the match. Before this Rana’s best international performance came in junior world championships in 2022 in the same venue where he won the mixed team and men’s team gold medals.
Inner 10s
Earlier, Rana and Tomar finished 1-2 in qualification to make the cut for the top eight shooters. Both shot 586, but Rana has more inner 10s (27) to top the qualification. Couple of hours later he delivered another cracking performance to become a world champion.
The Indian also won the team gold in the event. Rana, Tomar and Shravan Kumar shot a combined total of 1754 for the gold. Italy won silver and Germany bronze.
Manu Bhaker 7th
The women’s air pistol team also won silver. However, double Olympic medallist Manu Bhaker finished seventh in the individual final. She was in contention for a medal and even was on top but a 8.8 dramatically brought her down straight to seventh place and relegation. Asian Games medallist Esha Singh too was in good space but a similar poor shot saw her finish 6th. India added four medals to their kitty on the day to end second on the leaderboard behind China. India now have nine medals with three gold, silver and bronze each while China tops the table with six gold and a total of 12 medals.
ENDS
