At the 68th National Shooting Championship in Shotgun, ongoing at the Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range in New Delhi, the Rajasthan pair of Anantjeet Singh Naruka and Darshna Rathore bagged the gold medal in the Senior Skeet Mixed Team event after performing consistently well throughout the tournament. The duo defeated Uttar Pradesh in a hard-fought battle and a close match to win by 45-43.
Meanwhile, Haryana finished in the third position. The team of Raiza Dhillon, with 21 hits, and Ishaan Singh Libra, with 20 and secured the bronze medal, defeating Madhya Pradesh by 41–39. The Madhya Pradesh duo of Rituraj Bundela (with 20 hits) and Mansi Raghuwanshi (with 19 hits) finished in fourth position.
The UP pair of Olympian Mairaj Ahmad Khan and Areeba Khan ended the match with 21 and 22 hits respectively. Meanwhile, Rajasthan’s Anantjeet got 21 hits while Darshna added 24, giving them the lead by 2 hits.
Earlier in the qualification round, the Rajasthan pair were in the top rankings with 143 hits, with Anantjeet’s 73 and Darshna’s 70 that secured them a spot in the finals. On the other hand, the duo of Mairaj and Areeba were first tied with Haryana at 142 hits (74 from Mairaj and 68 from Areeba), but they managed to dominate the shootout round by 4–3. Haryana finished next with 142 hits.
Junior Skeet Mixed Team winners
In the Junior Skeet Mixed Team event, the Telangana duo of Yuvek Battula and Lakku Venkat Lakshmi, with 19 hits each, secured the gold medal with 38 hits. Madhya Pradesh finished second with Jyotiraditya Sisodiya’s 17 hits and Vanshika Tiwari adding 20 to make a score of 37.
The third position was claimed by Punjab with Harmehar Singh Lally and Parmeet Kaur with 40 hits, while the Rajasthan pair of Yashasvi Rathore and Yashwardhan S Rajawat finished in fourth place with 39 hits.
In the junior qualification round, Telangana topped the rankings with 141 hits from Yuvek (73) and Venkat Lakshmi (66) and secured their spot in the gold medal match against Madhya Pradesh, who finished in second place with 140 hits from Vanshika (71) and Jyotiraditya (69).
Punjab finished in third spot with 136 hits from Harmehar (73) and Parmeet (63), and Rajasthan took the fourth spot after scoring 133 hits from Yashasvi (70) and Yashwardhan (63).
