New Delhi. Vivaan Kapoor and Anantjit Singh Naruka, two young shotgun shooters from Jaipur, brightened India’s disappointing campaign by winning silver and bronze medals respectively on the final day of the season-ending ISSF World Cup Finals on Thursday.
Twenty-two-year-old trap shooter Vivaan and 26-year-old Olympian skeet shooter Naruka won the biggest medals of their careers at the Karni Singh Range as the hosts ended their campaign at the prestigious event with four medals, including two silver and two bronze medals.
Before this, Vivaan’s best performance was to win a silver medal in the team event of three World Cups in 2022. He scored 44 in the final and was behind gold medalist Ying Qi of China who scored 47. Türkiye’s Tolga N Tuncer won the bronze medal with a score of 35. Earlier, Vivaan had secured a place in the final of six shooters by finishing third in the qualification round by scoring 120 points out of 125.
Vivaan said after the competition, “This is going to boost my confidence because this is my first individual medal in the senior circuit.” Despite the presence of veteran shooters like 2008 Beijing Olympics gold medalist David Kostelecki of Czech Republic and former world champion James Willett of Australia, Vivaan remained unfazed and missed only six shots out of 50 while winning the silver.
He said, “I told myself that I am competing at the same level as them (top shooters). That’s why I am not behind anyone, this is how someone wins.” It was Vivaan’s fateful meeting with his father’s friend that sparked his desire to become a shotgun shooter.
He said, “It was the time of my father’s college reunion when one of his friends saw my enthusiasm for shooting and convinced my father to join me in shooting.” Naruka performed equally brilliantly in the men’s skeet final but unfortunately he could not get the bronze medal, one of the reasons being the malfunction in the clay target machines which spoiled his rhythm.
During the finals, the machine used to throw ‘clay targets’ malfunctioned twice when Naruka was about to take aim, due to which the tall shooter had to wait for a few minutes for the problem to be resolved. Naruka finished third in the final of six shooters with a score of 43. Italy’s Tamaro Cassandro got the gold medal and Gabriele Rossetti got the silver medal, who scored 57 and 56 respectively. Naruka had scored 121 out of 125 in the qualification round.
Naruka is happy to leave behind the disappointment of not winning a World Cup medal till now and finishing fourth with Maheshwari Chauhan in the mixed skeet event at the Paris Olympics, but is a little disappointed with the mistake she made twice while aiming. He said, “When ‘no target’ comes, it breaks your rhythm and then you have to start again. I kept telling myself that silver or gold is another step, I just have to focus on the next goal.”
Regarding finishing fourth in Paris, he said, “I have not been able to recover from that heartbreaking performance. Those memories keep coming again and again. It’s hard to lose when you’re so close to winning an Olympic medal in your first Games. But you always learn from your mistakes and I didn’t want to repeat it here.”
Hangzhou Asian Games silver medalist Naruka said, “When shooters were being eliminated one after another in the final today, I just prayed that after what happened to me in Paris, it should not happen again.” In the women’s skeet event, Ganimat Sekhon secured sixth place in the final. America’s Samantha Simonton won the gold medal with 56 points. She defeated double Olympic champion Diana Bacossi of Italy who scored 54 points. France’s Lucie Anastasio won the bronze medal. In the women’s trap final, Alessandra Perilli of San Marino won the gold medal with 45 points. Erica Sessa of Italy, who won the silver medal, was six points behind her. Türkiye’s Sefiye Temizdemir won the bronze medal.