National Shooting Championship: Bhavya Tripathi defends women’s trap crown, Shardul Vihan clinch men's title

In the men’s final at the National Shooting Championship, Olympian Prithviraj won the bronze medal ahead of big names.

Local favourite Bhavya Tripathi defended her national women’s trap champion title spectacularly, coming out stronger (9-8) in a sensational 18-shot shoot-off with Uttar Pradesh’s (U.P) Sabeera Haris after both combatants had tied at 41-hits in the 50-shot final.

Also landing his first men’s trap national title at the hallowed Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range (DKSSR) in the national capital, was Shardul Vihan, another U.P shooter, whose score of 45 in the final, was three clear of Haryana’s silver winner and qualification topper Lakshay Sheoran.

The men went first on individual Trap finals day of the 67th National Shooting Championship Competitions (NSCC) for Shotgun events at the DKSSR. Lakshay it seemed had carried forward his qualification form to begin with, however by the 40th shot, when Olympian Prithviraj Tondaiman bowed out with 34-hits and a bronze due to a higher bib number, Shardul had taken a two-shot lead going into the final 10-shots.

Shardul closed out the battle of the two Asian Games silver medallists in confident style and the process completed a sweep of all the individual trap and double-trap national titles, having won the junior men’s trap last year and the men’s and junior men’s double trap titles eight years back at the age of 14.

While Lakshay missed out on defending his title, Delhi’s Bhavya Tripathi was not going to let it go, creeping up steadily on Sabeera who led the women’s final for quite a while from the start and eventually taking the fight to a shoot-off.

Sabeera then had to be content with a second individual silver, when she lost out to Madhya Pradesh’s Shreshtha Sisodiya in the final event of the day, the junior women’s trap. Shreshtha had a brilliant day, winning bronze in the women’s trap as well. In the junior final, she shot 44 to Sabeera’s 41. Aashima Ahlawat of Haryana won bronze.

Vinay Pratap Singh Chadrawat of Rajasthan was the new junior men’s trap champion, outgunning the newly crowned national champ and defending champ Shardul 43-41 in the final. U.P’s Zuhair Khan won bronze.

Both Shardul and Bhavya had a hugely profitable day otherwise as well picking up four and three medals respectively. While Shardul won one gold, one silver and two team bronze medals, Bhavya picked up two golds (including the junior women’s team gold) and team bronze for her efforts.

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