Sangwan beats Manu Bhaker in women's 25m pistol

Double Olympic medallist Manu Bhaker finished second in women's 25m pistol in her return to competitive shooting after the Paris Olympics as Rhythm Sangwan emerged winner in the event on day five of the Rifle/Pistol National Selection Trials (Group A) in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Paris Olympics bronze medallist Swapnil Kusale and Arya Rajesh Borse also won the men's 50m rifle 3 positions (3P) T1 and the women's 10m air rifle T2 events at Dr Karni Singh Shooting range.

Haryana's Rhythm beat Bhaker -- who won a bronze each in the women's individual and mixed team events at the Paris 2024 Olympics -- for the top spot after a couple of shoot-offs from the final group that had four other Olympians in the fray.

Swapnil was next, a class apart in the men's 3P T1 final, while Borse registered a memorable triumph in a high-quality high scoring women's air rifle T2 final, falling just one short of the world record score achieved at the same venue.

Manu has been relentless in her first competition after the Paris Games, topping the women's 25m pistol trials for a second straight time, her 294 in the second rapid-fire qualifying round in the morning giving her a total of 591. Punjab's Simranpreet Kaur Brar, among the most consistent shooters in recent times in the event, was second with 588.

Also making the final eight cut were four other Olympians -- Rahi Sarnobat (588, 3rd), Esha Singh (586, 4th), Heena Sidhu (580, 5th) and Sangwan (578, 7th), setting up a thrilling decider.

In the end, Rhythm and Manu were tied with 37 hits after the 10-series of five shots each, and both the shooters needed two shoot-offs to be separated, the former prevailing 4-3 in the second after both had tied 4-4 in the first.

Swapnil qualified for the men's 3P T1 final with a smooth 592 out of 600, which gave him third spot on the leaderboard.

Navy's Kiran Ankush Jadhav topped with a sublime 596, while another top 3P shooter Akhil Sheoran was second with 593.

In the final, however, Swapnil led after the first five shots of the first kneeling position right till the end, pulling away expertly after every stage of the gruelling event. He ended with a 465.1, 2.6 ahead of Akhil, who was second. Veteran Chain Singh finished third.

Maharashtra's Arya, another shooter in rousing form, won the women's 10m air rifle T2 trial after an intense final.

Newly-crowned national champion Ananya Naidu set the tone with a scorching 53.1 after the first five-shot stage and continued to lead the field till the 20th shot of the 24-shot final.

Two-time Olympian Elavenil Valarivan gave her company for most part of the contest with Arya at sixth after 10 shots.

Then from the 11th to the 21st shot, Arya shot nothing below 10.4, ending the string with a perfect 10.9 to take the lead, as Mehuli Ghosh climbed up to beat Elavenil to the podium.

As both Arya and Ananya went into the final two shots on the same score (231.9), the former nailed a couple of 10.8s to finish with 253.5. Ananya also finished with two high 10s to her credit but fell 0.5 short in the end calculations.