Manu shoots another gold with world record

Teen sensation Manu Bhaker fired her way to an individual gold medal with a world record score while Anish Bhanwala bagged a bronze as India continued their dominance at the ISSF Junior World Cup in Suhl, Germany on Wednesday.

The 16-year-old Manu shot 242.5 to win the top prize in 10m air pistol event and Anish added to India's tally by finishing third in the men's 25m rapid fire pistol.

This was the year's seventh individual gold in an International Shooting Sport Federation competition for Manu and the third with a world record.

Their efforts took India's tally in the competition to an impressive haul of 17 medals so far.

Manu shot 242.5 in the 24-shot final, to claim yet another junior world record, shrugging off the challenge of China’s Kaiman Lu, whose silver-winning effort of 236.9 was a massive 5.6 points behind the Indian's score.

Chinese Xue Li won bronze with a final round score of 216.2.

Manu had earlier combined with team-mates Mahima Turhi Agrawal and Devanshi Rana to win the team bronze with a total score of 1694 after the qualification round.

Such was Manu’s dominance in the final that she was ahead of the field by 3.4 points after 10 shots, 3.8 after 12 and a huge 6.1 after 18 shots before closing out with plenty to spare.

Reigning Commonwealth Games champion Anish claimed his fourth international medal of the year when he shot 24 in the Junior Men’s final of the 25m rapid fire event.

Anish had earlier shot 575 in qualifying to be fifth out of the top six to make it to the final. The gold went to Matej Rampula of the Czech Republic while China’s Jueming Zhang won silver with final scores of 30 and 28 respectively.

India have so far won nine gold, one silver and seven bronze medals from the competition which has seen participation from the top shooting nations.