Zoravar fires two clean rounds to rise to second on leaderboard

Athens, Oct 16 (PTI) Indian trap shooter Zoravar Singh Sandhu fired two perfect rounds of 25 each to rise to second on the men's trap shooting qualification leaderboard at the ISSF World Championship Shotgun 2025, here Thursday.

Zoravar's four-round (24,25,25,25) tally of 99, has placed him between the two Glasnovic brothers from Croatia, Anton and Josip.

Anton, the elder of the two and a former world championship silver medalist, leads the standings, having not yet missed a target while the latter, a former Olympic champion, is on the same score as Zoravar, but behind on countback.

In a top field comprising all the Paris Olympic medallists and several former Olympic and World champions, Zoravar held his own to execute two perfect rounds in his unique quick style, which has now made him favourite to make the top-six finals cut.

The Indian missed one target in his first round on Wednesday and since then has had three perfect rounds to put himself in a favourable position.

At one stage, the Indian troika of Zoravar, Bhowneesh Mendiratta and Vivaan Kapoor, had together hit 127 targets without a miss, before Bhowneesh broke that sequence.

Both Vivaan (23,25,22,24) and Bhowneesh (22,25,25,22) finished the day on identical scores of 94 for 38th and 40th positions provisionally and have only a mathematical chance of going through.

Other scores and positions on the day: Trap Women: Neeru - 44th, 86 (23,19,23,21) Aashima Ahlawat - 48th, 84 (20,19,22,23) Kirti Gupta - 58th, 82 (20,22,21,19). PTI AT AT SSC SSC