Olympian Sift Kaur Samra continued her stellar season by winning gold in the Women’s 50m Rifle Three Positions at the ongoing 16th Asian Shooting Championships in Shymkent, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday. She also led the team to gold, underlining her status as one of the top shooting talents in the country.
Samra’s victory adds to a string of recent successes this year. She previously won gold at the ISSF World Cup in Buenos Aires and bronze in Munich.
The 23-year-old world record holder and reigning Asian Games champion delivered a calm and clinical performance under pressure. In a tense final against China’s Yang Yujie, Samra trailed by 0.3 points heading into the last two shots of the standing position. But the young Indian shooter stayed composed, scoring 9.6 and 10.0, while Yang faltered with an 8.7 followed by a 10.2 — handing Samra the gold with a score of 459.2 to Yang’s 458.8. Japan’s Misaki Nobata took bronze with 448.2.
Samra had earlier shot the second best qualification round with 589-24x, and teammate Ashi Chouksey also made the final with 586 but could only manage a seventh place. Shriyanka Sadangi, though topping the qualification chart with 589-33x, was ineligible for the final as she was competing for Ranking Points Only (RPO). Anjum Moudgil, a two-time Olympian, finished 22nd with 578.
In the team event, the combined score of 1753 — from Samra (589), Chouksey (586), and Moudgil (578) — earned the gold, narrowly edging out Japan (1750) and South Korea (1745).
The overall tally at the Asian Shooting Championships now stands at 19 senior medals — including nine gold, three silver, and seven bronze — with several events still to come.