Jitu Rai Back to Medal Winning Ways After an Olympics Break


New Delhi, Oct 06, 2016: India’s pistol ace, Jitu Rai, came back to his medal winning ways in top international competitions, when he struck Silver in his favourite Men’s 50M Pistol event at the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup Finals (Rifle/Pistol) which got underway at Bologna, Italy.  Jitu, currently ranked number seven in the event globally after he missed out on making the finals of the event at the Rio 2016 Olympic games by just two points, was back in his elements in Bologna. He finished second in qualifying with a score of 568 to make it to the eight man finals behind Ukraine’s Oleh Omelchuk and then narrowly lost out to China’s Wei Pang in the final to settle for Silver.

Jitu started strongly in the finals and shot straight into the lead, before Wei Pang caught up. Jitu had a poor fourth and fifth series but eventually shot 188.8 to win second position behind Wei Pang’s score of 190.6

Only the top 10 shooters in the event, barring world number one Jongoh Jin of Korea, were participating. The ISSF World Cup Finals competition is the season-ending competition of the annual ISSF calendar and brings together only the best performing shooters in the World in a particular year. In an Olympic year, the Olympic medalists are added to the line-up.