Sejal Kamble hogged the limelight as the Indian shooters continued their good run at the ISSF Junior World Cup 2026 in Cairo, Egypt, and added four more medals to their tally on Wednesday.
In the women’s 25m pistol event, Sejal won the silver medal after shooting 27 in the final, four less than Neutral Athlete Katsiaryna Ivanova who took gold. The bronze went to Sofiia Smetankina, another neutral shooter. Anjali Bhagwat and Parisha Gupta finished sixth and seventh, respectively, in the eight-woman final.
Earlier, in the qualifiers, Kamble had topped the standings with 580 – 11x and was followed by Parisha, who shot 577 – 15x. Anjali Mahendra Bhagwat was fifth with 576 – 11x.
In the men’s 25m pistol event, India secured two podium finishes courtesy of Raj Chandra winning the silver with 580 – 20x across the precision and rapid fire stages and Abhinav Deshwal picking up the bronze with 578 – 14x.
Gold medallist Kirill Tsukanov (581 – 19x) was, in fact, the only non-Indian in the top six with Yug Pratap Singh Rathore, Sahil Choudhary and Abhinav Choudhary occupying positions fourth to sixth in sequence.
The men’s 25m pistol is a non-Olympic shooting event and different from the men’s 25m rapid fire pistol variant which features at the Summer Games. In another non-Olympic event, the men’s 50m rifle prone, – Rohit Kanyan added another silver to India’s tally. He shot 615.8 to finish a meagre 0.5 behind gold medal winner, Oleg Noskov of Kazakhstan.
The bronze went to neutral athlete Arseni Livantsou, who shot 615.3 to edge another Indian Shivendra Bahadur Singh (613.6) from the podium.
The first shotgun medals of the ongoing junior ISSF World Cup were also decided on the day with the individual skeet events concluding Risham Guron made the women’s skeet final after finishing second in the qualifiers. However, she could only muster a seventh-place finish in the medal round.
Sanyogita Shekhawat, Parmeet Kaur and Agrima Kanwar failed to make the cut for the medal round.
In the men’s skeet, Ishaan Singh Libra narrowly missed out on a podium spot after finishing fourth. Earlier, he had finished sixth in the qualifiers to earn a medal shot. Harviraj Singh and Zorawar Singh Bedi didn’t make the cut.
The four medals on Wednesday takes India’s medals tally at the 2026 ISSF Junior World Cup Cairo to seven, one gold, four silver and two bronze.
Shiva Narwal and Chirag Sharma had clinched the gold and silver medals in the men’s 10m air pistol on Tuesday, while Panaah Bhugra settled for the silver medal in the women’s 10m air rifle.
