Olympian Anantjeet Singh Naruka clinched India’s first senior gold at the ongoing 16th Asian Shooting Championship, emerging victorious in Men’s Skeet with a near-flawless performance in Shymkent on Wednesday.
Naruka, who represented India at the 2024 Paris Olympics, shot 57 out of a possible 60 in a tense final to edge out Kuwait’s Mansour Al-Rashidi, a former Asian Games champion, by a single point. The bronze medal was secured by Qatari shooter Ali Ahmed Al-Ishaq, who finished with a score of 43.
This gold marks Naruka’s first individual title at the Asian Championship and a personal milestone after narrowly missing the top podium spot last year in Kuwait, where he settled for silver following a 57-56 defeat to Chinese Taipei’s Lee Meng-yuan.
Naruka was the only Indian shooter to qualify for the men’s final after placing second in the qualification round with a score of 119/125. Among other Indian competitors, Olympian Angad Vir Singh Bajwa, a two-time Asian champion, finished eighth in the qualifiers but was shooting for Ranking Points Only (RPO). Bhavtegh Singh Gill and Abhay Singh Sekhon placed 28th and 31st respectively, with the Indian men’s team ranking sixth overall.
Naruka’s triumph comes as a redemptive moment after narrowly missing out on a bronze at the Paris Olympics in the Mixed Skeet Team alongside Maheshwari Chauhan. He bounced back later that same year with a bronze at the ISSF World Cup Final in New Delhi and has now cemented his status as one of India’s top shotgun shooters with this historic gold.
In Women’s Skeet, India’s team of Maheshwari Chauhan, Ganemat Sekhon, and Raiza Dhillon delivered a strong performance to clinch a bronze. The trio posted a total score of 329, behind gold medalists China (342) and silver winners Kazakhstan (339).
Maheshwari Chauhan also qualified for the individual final after finishing fifth in the preliminaries but narrowly missed out on a podium finish, placing fourth. The gold and silver went to China’s Jiang Yiting and Che Yufei, respectively, while Kazakhstan’s Anastassiya Molchanova edged Chauhan to claim bronze.
India’s overall medal tally in senior events at the 16th Asian Shooting Championship now stands at six — one gold, one silver, and four bronze — second only to powerhouse China.