Indian pistol shooter Anish Bhanwala finished seventh in the men’s 25m Rapid Fire Pistol final at the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, bringing his campaign in the event to a close after three series of the medal round.
Bhanwala had secured his place in the eight-shooter final after finishing ninth in qualification with a total score of 576-17x. He had registered 290-11x in Stage 1 before adding 286 points in Stage 2. Despite finishing outside the initial top eight, Bhanwala progressed to the final after the two-per-country rule came into effect, with three shooters from South Korea occupying places inside the top eight.
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Entering the final, Bhanwala faced a field that included South Korea’s Gun-hyeok Lee, Seo-yeong Yoon, China’s Lianbofan Su, Indonesia’s Dewa Putu Yadi Suteja, Vietnam’s Quang Huy Pham, Kazakhstan’s Nikita Chiryukin and Pakistan’s Ghulam Mustafa Bashir.
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Bhanwala began the final with three hits in the opening series, before adding four hits in the second series to take his tally to seven. He then produced another four hits in the opening series of Stage 2, taking his total to 11 hits.
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The Indian shooter, however, found himself tied on 11 hits with three other competitors. With the shooters level on hits, their qualification rankings were used as the tiebreaker. Having entered the final with the lowest qualification ranking among those tied on 11, Bhanwala was eliminated and finished seventh overall.
The result brings India and Bhanwala’s individual 25m Rapid Fire Pistol campaign at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games to an end. It also concludes India’s shooting campaign at the 2026 Asian Games, having won a total of 15 medals across various categories.
Pic: NRAI
