India Win First Gold Medal In Asian Games 2023, Rudrankksh Patil, Aishwary Pratap Singh And Divyansh Singh Panwar End On Top In 10m Air Rifle Team Event

India have won their first gold medal of the Asian Games 2023 in Hangzhou on Monday with the 10m air rifle shooting team of Rudrankksh Patil, Aishwary Pratap Singh and Divyansh Singh Panwar ending on top sport in the team event in Hangzhou. India finished with a score of 1893.7, a world record.

All three of the 10m air rifle shooting team – Rudrankksh, Aishwary and Divyansh have also qualified for the individual final which will take place later in the day. While Rudrankksh Patil and Aishwary Pratap Singh were clear in the top eight, Divyansh Singh Panwar squeezed through via higher inner 10s.

India now have 1 gold, 3 silver and 3 bronze medal for total of 7 medals so far.

________ _____ ___ __ ___ ___! ___- ___ ____ ___ _______@RudrankkshP, @DivyanshSinghP7, and Aishwary Pratap Tomar have hit the bullseye and secured the 1__st Gold for India in the 10m Air Rifle Men's Team event at the #AsianGames2022._ pic.twitter.com/wQbtEYX2CQ — SAI Media (@Media_SAI) September 25, 2023

Rudrankksh Patil is a world champion, who hails from Thane in Maharashtra. In December 2022, Rudrankksh Patil was ranked No. 1 in the 10m air rifle. He secured a Paris 2024 Olympic quota berth after winning gold in the 10m air rifle event, at the 2022 ISSF World Shooting Championships.

Meanwhile, India won their seventh medal at the Asian Games 2023, a bronze in the Men’s Four category. Jaswinder Singh, Bheem Singh, Punit Kumar and Ashish take home a medal, but what they will be really proud about is how closely they managed to run the home team from China. If the race had been 500m longer they would have overhauled the Chinese team as well.

In one of the most dominating displays seen by Indian air rifle shooters in multi-discipline events, the 19-year-old Rudrankksh shot a superb 632.5, Tomar 631.6 and Panwar 629.6 to aggregate the world record score as South Korean was pushed to second spot (1890.1), while the Chinese team was a distant third with an aggregate score of 1888.2.

Rudrankksh and Aishwary also made it to the eight-shooter finals in the event and would be gunning for more glory after the qualification round. In 10m air rifle shooting team event, the aggregate of the qualification scores decide the medallists, while the eight top shooters in the preliminary round move into the finals for individual glory.

While all three Indian marksmen shot amazing scores, Divyansh would be extremely disappointed to miss the finals berth due to an Asian Games rule where only two marksmen from a particular country can make it to the finals.

Sheng Lihao of China topped the qualification round with a score of 634.5, a qualification Asian Games record, while South Korea's Park Hajun was second at 632.8. Rudrankksh, at 632.5 was third entering the finals, while Aishwary was fifth at 631.6 among the list of qualifiers.

The Indian trio was just unbeatable on way to team gold with Rudrankksh, true to his form, shooting superb series of 104.8, 106.1, 103.8, 105.5 106.7 and 105.6. Aishwary had a series of 104.1, 105.5, 105.3, 105.7, 105.7 and 105.3 in qualification.

Rudrankksh’s father, Balasahab Patil, told PTI following his son’s exploits, “My son was determined to give his best at the Games. He has great confidence in his abilities and before leaving for Hangzhou, Rudrankksh said he would aim to bring the first gold for the country.

“He had ironed out all the minor issues in his shooting before leaving for Hangzhou. He trained extremely hard in these last two months.”

(with PTI inputs)