Indian shooters Rohit Kanyan and Sameer won the gold medals in the men’s 50m rifle 3 position and 25m rapid fire pistol events, respectively, at the ISSF Junior World Championship 2026 in Suhl, Germany, on Friday.
Sameer scored 28 out of 40 to claim the top spot. Despite landing just one of his five shots in the final series, the Indian marksman edged out France’s Arnaud Gamaleri by a single point to become the junior world champion in the category.
In the men’s 25m rapid fire pistol team event, Sameer, Abhinav Choudhary and Sahil Choudhary combined to score 1708-51x to bag the bronze medal, finishing behind Ukraine and France.
Sameer was the only Indian to make the individual final after finishing sixth with in the qualifiers with 572-23x.
In the men’s 50m rifle 3 positions event, Rohit Kanyan shot 355.9 in the final to finish higher than Rinat Kazachenko of Kazakhstan and Austria’s Patrick Entner on the podium.
Rohit Kanyan was the only Indian in the final after finishing sixth in the qualifiers with 587-32x.
Rohit, along with Vedant Waghmare and Hithesh Srinivasan, bagged the bronze in the team event after tallying 1746-84x. USA claimed the gold with a new junior world record total of 1764-107x while Norway took the silver.
Meanwhile, Prachi Gaikwad won the silver medal in the women’s 50m rifle 3 positions event after shooting 354.7 in the final to finish behind neutral athlete Taisia Tikhomirova, who shot 357.2.
Emely Jaeggi of Switzerland took the bronze with 344.2.
Prachi had just about edged into the medal round earlier by finishing eighth in the qualifiers with 586-29x. India’s Shrivalli Shrivastava, Melvina Angeline Joel Gladson and Anushka Thokur failed to make the cut from the qualifiers.
Prachi, Shrivalli and Anushka finished sixth in the women’s team event.
Overall, Indian shooters now have won eight medals – four gold, one silver and three bronze – at the Suhl meet.
Sejal Kamble was crowned the women’s 10m air pistol champion on Thursday while Himanshi clinched bronze in the same event.
The Indian women’s pistol shooting team also claimed gold.
Over 800 shooters from 70 federations are competing at the fifth edition of the Junior Shooting World Championships. India have sent an 84-member contingent to Suhl.
The last edition of the ISSF Junior World Championship was held in Lima, Peru, in 2024. India topped the medals tally there with 24 medals, including 13 gold, three silver and eight bronze.
The ISSF Junior World Championship 2026 will conclude on June 26.
read more: https://www.olympics.com/en/news/issf-junior-world-championship-2026-india-day-2-medal-report
