Indian shooter Pritam Kendre set the shooting range on fire by winning the gold medal in the men’s 10m air rifle event at the ISSF Junior World Championship 2026 in Suhl, Germany, on Sunday.
Indian shooters have now won 11 medals at the Suhl meet, including five golds.
Pritam shot 251.3 in the eight-man final to finish above neutral athlete Timofei Aleinikov and Norway’s Jens Oestli.
Another Indian Piyush Sharma, narrowly missed a podium spot. He trailed Oestli by just 0.1 points after the fourth elimination round which established the top three.
Piyush had finished third in the qualifiers with a score of 629.0 while Pritam Kendre was fifth with 628.2. The two were the only Indians to make the shooting final.
India didn’t rank in the team event despite Pritam and Piyush’s good rankings as the third member of the team, Abhinav Shaw, was disqualified as his equipment failed to adhere to ISSF’s stiffness measurement standards under rule 7.5.2.2.a.
In the women’s 25m pistol event, the Indian team comprising Anjali Bhagwat, Parisha Gupta and Nithila Christopher won a bronze medal after finishing with a combined score of 1713-43x. Teams comprising neutral athletes won the gold and silver medals.
Anjali had finished seventh in the qualifiers with a score of 577-11x and was the only one among the six Indians in contention to make the final. Manvi Jain narrowly missed the cut, finishing ninth.
84-member Indian contingent set for ISSF Junior World Championship in Suhl
In the medal round, Anjali finished sixth and bowed out of contention after losing a shootout against Karina Zaichenko of Ukraine in the second round of elimination.
Over 800 shooters from 70 federations are competing at the fifth edition of the Junior Shooting World Championships. India have sent an 84-member contingent to Suhl.
The last edition of the ISSF Junior World Championship was held in Lima, Peru, in 2024. India topped the medals tally there with 24 medals, including 13 gold, three silver and eight bronze.
The ISSF Junior World Championship 2026 will conclude on June 26.
Pic: ISSF
