India's Elavenil Valarivan won gold in the women's 10m air rifle event at the ISSF World Cup in Rio de Janiero on Wednesday. This is Valarivan's first senior medal at a World Cup. She shot a score of 251.7 in the final to pip Great Britain's Seonaid McIntosh (250.6) and Chinese Taipei's Lin Ying-Shin (229.9), who ended with silver and bronze respectively.
India has already secured a maximum possible two quota places from this event for the Rio Olympics after Anjum Moudgil and Apurvi Chandela had finished third and fourth at the World Championships last year. Moudgil finished sixth here after shooting a score of 166.8 in the final.
Earlier, Valarivan and Moudgil qualified for the final in fourth and fifth place after scoring 629.4 and 629.1 respectively in the qualification round. Chandela missed out narrowly, finishing 11th with a score of 627.7.
Valarivan is the third Indian to win gold in this event at a World Cup after Anjali Bhagwat and Chandela. Bhagwat won gold in Fort Benning in 2003, while Chandela won gold at the New Delhi and Munich World Cups earlier this year.
This is only Valarivan's fourth appearance at a senior World Cup. Her previous-best finish was fourth at the Munich World Cup, where she narrowly missed out on a medal.
The 20-year old, who is based out of Ahmedabad, is a highly successful shooter at the junior level, having won a silver at the junior World Championships last year. She had also won gold in the same event at the junior World Cups in Suhl in 2018 as well as 2019 and Sydney in 2018.
Valarivan had also won gold at the Asian Championships in Taoyuan, Chinese Taipei this year, where she shot a score of 250. 5 in the final to pip Chandela.
