Shooting: Sift Kaur Samra Clinches Bronze at ISSF Munich World Cup; India finish with two medals

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Women’s 3P (50m rifle 3 positions) specialist Sift Kaur Samra won bronze on Friday (June 7), the final day of the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup Rifle/Pistol in Munich. With that, India ended the competition with two medals.

On Thursday (June 6), Sarabjot Singh secured the gold medal in the men’s 10m Air Pistol event. Sift narrowly missed the silver medal by a mere 0.1 point, with a score of 452.9, finishing just behind China’s Han Jiayu, the current women's air rifle world champion.

The gold medal in this event went to Seonaid McIntosh of Great Britain, who scored 466.7 points. As another distinguished group began competing at the Munich Olympic Shooting Range, a malfunction in Danish Olympian Ibsen Rekke Maeng’s electronic target system caused a minor delay in completing the Kneeling position of the women's 3P final. Seonaid had secured a significant lead by this point, while Sift was in seventh place.

As the Briton powered ahead after the second Prone position, ahead by almost three from second-placed Chinese Zhang Qiongyue at that stage, Sift clawed up to fifth with an above-average round.

A brilliant second five-shot series in the last Standing position then brought her up to the joint bronze medal position tied with China’s Han Jiayu, the reigning world champion in women’s 10m Air Rifle.

Sift was now in her element and after the 43rd shot of the 45-shot final, she had climbed up to second but eventually had to settle for bronze by the narrowest of margins.

The men’s 3P final featured top-tier talent, including experienced Serbian and two-time Olympian Milutin Stefanovic, leading Hungarian rifle shooter Istvan Peni, Chinese world-record holder Yukun Liu, the in-form Jiri Privratsky of Czechia, and Norwegian world championship bronze medallist Jon-Hermann Hegg, among others.

The gold in the end went to the second Norwegian in the field, Ole Martin Halvorsen (464.3) who beat Peni by 0.2 in an up-and-down final. Hegg took bronze with 449.9.

India’s Aishwary Tomar never really recovered from a slow start to the final and was the first to exit the final in eighth place with a score of 408.9 after 40 shots. He was fourth after the first Kneeling position, before going down to eighth after Prone and then an 8.9 for his 39th shot and ninth in Standing, really came at the wrong time.