Indian women's, men's air rifle teams reach medal rounds at Baku Shooting World Cup

Both the Indian women's and men's 10m Air Rifle teams reached the medal rounds of their respective events on competition day three of the ISSF World Cup Rifle/Pistol/Shotgun in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Monday.

The women in fact did one better than the men, making it to the gold medal match on Tuesday against Denmark, while the men will take on Croatia on the same day, for a shot at bronze.

Former world number one Elavenil Valarivan, Ramita and Shreya Agrawal, first topped qualification stage one of the 10m Air Rifle Team Women event with a combined effort of 944.4 over 90-shots, among 17 competing teams. They then came second in stage two behind Denmark, to make the title round. The trio shot 628.6 to Denmark's 629.2 after all three team members shot 20-shots each.

In the 10m Air Rifle Team Men competition, the Indian trio of Rudrankksh Balasaheb Patil, Dhanush Srikanth and Paarth Makhija finished third in qualification stage two to make it to the bronze medal match. The trio had finished second to Austria in stage one to make the top-eight stage out of 14 teams.

Earlier in the 10m Air Rifle Mixed Team event, both the pairing of Shreya and Rudrankksh and Elavenil and Paarth, could not make much headway. The former finished 14th in qualification with a score of 625.6 while the latter shot 623.5 for a 24th place finish.

India have fielded a 12-member rifle-only squad in this World Cup.