Anish Bhanwala, Sift Kaur Samra and Umamahesh Maddineni win in national selection trials

Olympians Anish Bhanwala, Sift Kaur Samra, and junior world championship medallist Umamahesh Maddineni won the national selection trials (T3) for Group 'A' athletes in the men's 25m rapid fire, women's 50m 3 positions, and 10m air rifle events, respectively, here on Wednesday. The trials are being held at the Trishul Shooting Range in Maharana Pratap Sports College.

Anish shot 33 in the finals, four better than his statemate Adarsh Singh, who finished in second place, while Navy's Pradeep Singh Shekhawat took third place with a score of 23. Earlier, Anish added 289 in Stage 2 of qualification after he had shot 293 in Stage 1 on Tuesday to qualify for the final in first place with a total of 582.

Pradeep finished in second with a score of 581 (290, 291) while Gurmeet Singh finished third with a score of 579 (289, 290). Harsimar Singh Rattha (577), Neeraj Kumar (576 and Adarsh Singh (574) completed the top six.

Sift Kaur Samra, who recently won bronze at the ISSF World Cup in Munich, showed her class in the women's 50m 3 positions finals by finishing on top with a score of 467.3, which was 10.4 points better than Aaakriti Dahiya, who finished second with 456.9. Ashi Chouksey took the third spot with a score of 443.9 after she had finished on top in qualification with 592, ahead of Sift, who shot 591.

Aakriti shot 588 to finish third while Mehuli Ghosh (588), Ayushi Podder (587), Vidarsa K Vinod (586), Vanshika Shah (585), and Nischal Singh (585) completed the top eight.

In the men's 10m air rifle finals, Umamahesh Maddineni, who shot 252.2, edged Buenos Aires World Cup gold medallist Rudrankksh Patil, who finished with a score of 251.5 to secure the top spot. Divyansh Panwar took third spot with a score of 230.1. Earlier in the qualification round, local boy Shourya Saini and Divyansh Panwar both shot 632.9, but the former finished on top after hitting more inner 10s.

Seventeen-year-old Parth Rakesh Mane finished third with a score of 632.5 while Rudrankksh (631.9), Paarth Makhija (631.6), Umamahesh (630.9), Sandeep Singh (630.9), and Vishal Singh (630.7) completed the top eight. The action will continue on Thursday with the qualification and finals of men's 10m air rifle T4, women's 25m pistol T3, and women's 50m rifle 3P T4, along with the men's 25m rapid fire pistol T4 Stage 1.

These trials are expected to help shape the Indian shooting team for the 16th Asian Shooting Championships in Kazakhstan in August and the ISSF World Cup in Ningbo, China, in September.