Bhavya defends women's trap national crown, Shardul wins men's competition

New Delhi, Jan 16 (PTI) Local favourite Bhavya Tripathi defended her women's trap title in spectacular fashion, while Uttar Pradesh's Shardul Vihan won the men's competition at the National Shooting Championship here on Thursday.

Bhavya came out stronger (9-8) in a sensational 18-shot shoot-off against UP's Sabeera Haris, after both the shooters were tied at 41 hits in the 50-shot final.

Also landing his first men's trap national title at the Dr Karni Singh Shooting range was Shardul, whose score of 45 in the final was three clear of Haryana's silver winner and qualification topper Lakshay Sheoran.

In the men's trap final, Lakshay seemed to have carried forward his qualification form to begin with. However, by the 40th shot, when Olympian Prithviraj Tondaiman bowed out with 34 hits and a bronze, Shardul had taken a two-shot lead going into the final 10 attempts.

Shardul closed out the battle of the two Asian Games silver medallists in confident style and in the process completed a sweep of all the individual trap and double-trap national titles, having won the junior men's trap last year and the men's and junior men's double trap titles eight years back at the age of 14.

While Lakshay missed out on defending his title, Delhi's Bhavya was not going to let it go, moving up steadily as Sabeera led the women's final for quite a while.

Eventually, Sabeera had to be content with a second individual silver, when she lost out to Madhya Pradesh's Shreshtha Sisodiya in the final event of the day, the junior women's trap.

Shreshtha had a brilliant day, winning bronze in women's trap as well. In the junior final, she shot 44 against Sabeera's 41. Aashima Ahlawat of Haryana won the bronze.

Vinay Pratap Singh Chadrawat of Rajasthan was the new junior men's trap champion, outgunning the newly crowned national winner and defending champion Shardul 43-41 in the final. UP's Zuhair Khan won bronze.

Both Shardul and Bhavya had a hugely profitable day otherwise as well, picking up four and three medals respectively.

While Shardul won one gold, one silver and two team bronze medals, Bhavya picked up two golds (including in junior women's team) and a team bronze for her efforts. PTI AH AH SSC SSC