New Delhi, May 11: Neeru Dhanda and Vivaan Kapoor clinched a bronze medal in the trap mixed team event at the ISSF World Cup Shotgun held in Almaty. The duo scored 24 out of 30 targets in the final, matching the performance of the Italian pair Silvana Stanco and Mauro De Filippo. However, they missed out on a higher medal due to their second-place finish in the qualification round, where the Italian team secured silver.
In the final, Kun-Pi Yang and Wan-Yu Liu from Chinese Taipei achieved a world record score of 36, earning their second gold medal at the World Cup. Neeru and Vivaan scored 143 in the qualification, just two points shy of the silver medalists, Silvana and Mauro, who are also previous world champions. The Indian pair secured their spot in the final by scoring a perfect 25 in the third round, with Vivaan missing only two targets out of 75.
Their teammates, Ahwar Rizvi and Pragati Dubey, finished 23rd out of 31 teams with a score of 130. In the decisive round, after the first 10 targets, Kun and Wan led with a perfect score. Neeru missed her third target, allowing India to fall to second place. Earlier, Vivaan maintained excellent form in the qualification round by hitting all five targets.
Italy and China competed fiercely for the third position. After 20 targets, Italy edged out with one hit more, while Chinese Taipei extended their lead over India by two points as Neeru missed two more targets. The Italian pair did not miss any targets in the third series, while Vivaan missed his first target on the 13th shot in the final. Ultimately, both pairs ended up with equal scores, but the Italian team won due to their better qualification round performance.
Despite this, it marked Neeru and Vivaan’s first ISSF World Cup medal in an Olympic event, a commendable achievement. This is also India’s second medal since the event was included in last year’s Olympic Games. Asian and national champion Neeru Dhanda reached the finals of the women’s trap competition at the ISSF World Cup Shotgun in Almaty. After the first elimination round of 10 shots, she finished seventh with seven hits.
In the second five-shot series, despite hitting all five targets, the Indian shooter could not recover from three misses in the first round. All three podium positions were claimed by Olympic medalists. Australian shooter Penny Smith, a bronze medalist at the Paris Olympics, won gold with a world record of 30 hits out of 30, while Spain’s Tokyo Olympic mixed team champion Fatima Galvez secured silver with 25 hits. Slovakia’s legendary shooter, Juzana Rehak Stefecekova, took home the bronze.
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