Munich, June 14: India’s Arya Borse and Arjun Babuta produced a thoroughly dominant performance and outplayed China’s Zifei Wang and Lihao Sheng 17-7 to win the gold medal in the 10m air rifle mixed team event of the ISSF World Cup here on Saturday.
Borse and Babuta were in fine fettle when it mattered the most to win the top prize in the prestigious tournament, not giving the Chinese an inch.
The Indian duo entered the gold medal round after aggregating 635.2 in the qualifications, just .7 behind Wang and Sheng (635.9), which is also the qualifications world record.
Individually, Borse managed 317.5 while Babuta shot 317.7 in the qualifications.
Borse had paired with Rudrankksh Patil to win the 10m air rifle mixed team silver in the World Cup in Lima, Peru, earlier this year.
The other Indian pair in the event, Elavenil Valarivan and Ankush Jadhav finished sixth in the qualifications with 631.8.
Norway’s Jeanette Hegg Duestad and Jon-Hermann Hegg bagged the bronze medal with a 16-14 victory over the UAS’s Sagen Maddalena and Peter Matthew Fiori.
This is India’s fourth medal and second gold in the ongoing World Cup after Suruchi Singh’s yellow mettle and the two bronze won by Sift Kaur Samra and Elavenil in their respective individual events earlier this week. (PTI)
