Defending national champion Manavjit Singh Sandhu and his Punjab team mate Mansher Singh are the early pace setters in the trap competition of the National Shooting Championships currently underway at the Karni Singh Shooting ranges. Both Manavjit and Mansher have tallied identical score of 73 after the first three rounds in the competition.
Starting with a perfect score of 25,Manavjit,the former World Champion,settled for a series of 24 in the next two. The scoring was in reverse for Mansher,who finished the day with a 25 . Also shooting a perfect score of 25 was Andhra Pradesh’s Kynan Chinai,who is a shot adrift of the early leaders as is Air India’s Birendeep Sondhi. Army’s Vikram Singh Deo and the veteran Uttar Pradesh shooter Anwer Sultan are three shots behind having shot 70 targets out of the 75 possible.
Meanwhile,the trap finals for women’s had to be put off for a day for a technical glitch on the final range. As a result – with officials taking time to fix the problem – matches on the range finished behind schedule for the day. After three rounds defending champion Seema Tomar with a score of 68 has a three-shot lead over India compatriot,ONGC’s Shagun Chowdhary,who shot 65. Both the girl’s were on 44,going into the third round,but while Seema got over her nerves to shoot a near-perfect 24,Shagun could only manage 21 targets. Haryana’s Snehlata Singh was next on the leaderboard with 62. Bihar’s Shreyasi Singh was fourth with a score of 60 along with Army’s Varsha Tomar. But that score was enough for Shreyasi to bag the junior women’s title. Tamil Nadu’s Asia Khilj (50) and Madhya Pradesh’s Varsha Varma (40),took silver and bronze,respectively.