Shooting nationals: Riya Shirish beats top field to land first crown in women’s 25m pistol

New Delhi (The Uttam Hindu): Aurangabad teenager Riya Shirish Thatte stunned a top field in the women’s 25m pistol final of the 67th National Shooting Championship Competitions (NSCC) at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range (DKSSR) here on Monday, to land her first senior national title. Riya got the better of Punjab’s Simranpreet Kaur Brar 7-2 in a shoot-off for gold after both had tied at 31 hits in the eight series of five-shots decider. Olympian and former Asian Games champion Rahi Sarnobat was third with 25 hits.

Simranpreet rounded off a great year by winning the junior women’s title on the day to add to the silver medal at the senior level won previously, this time winning the gold shoot-off 5-2 over Haryana’s Payal after both had tied on 34-hits-a-piece. Riya won bronze in this category with 30 hits.

Riya’s father Shirish, a former national-level shooter himself and her first coach who is also accompanying the shooter, said, “She had tears in her eyes. There is no range in Aurangabad and we used to travel 250 km to Pune’s Balewadi range where Akshay Ashtaputre, also the mentor of Swapnil Kusale, has been coaching her for the last five years. She wants to shoot and earn laurels for India.”

The senior finals field, besides Simranpreet, who was in contention to make the Paris Olympics this year, and Rahi, also had such top former internationals as Heena Sidhu and Annu Raj Singh among others.

Earlier Simranpreet topped both the qualification stages with identical scores of 584. Riya, while qualifying second in the juniors, managed to make the final, clinching the eighth and last qualifying spot with scores of 576.