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Indian shooter Maheshwari Chauhan secured the 21st shooting quota for the Paris 2024 Olympics for India, and fifth in the shotgun category after a solid performance in the women's skeet event at the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) Olympic Shotgun Qualification Championship in Doha, Qatar on Sunday.
The Doha event is the final qualifying event for Paris 2024 in shotgun. The top two shooters from each event (maximum one per country) got the quotas at the meet, as per Olympics.com. Maheshwari bagged the second-place finish in the women's skeet event, behind Chile's Francisca Crovetto Chadid. Both had scored 54 each but the Chilean prevailed by 4-3 in a shoot-off. "I am thrilled. There has been a lot of hard work over the years to get here. I am a bit bummed about the shoot-off, but overall, it has been very satisfying," Maheshwari said after the final as quoted by Olympics.com. Other than her, the other shotgun shooters with Olympic quotas for India are: Bhowneesh Mendiratta (men's trap), Rajeshwari Kumari (women's trap), Raiza Dhillon (women's skeet) and Anantjeet Singh Naruka (men's skeet). It is up to the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) to decide who goes to represent the nation at the multi-sport marquee event and the ones with quotas might not always get a chance to represent the tricolour at the highest level. Maheshwari's quota also means that India can field two shooters in the women's skeet event in Paris. In the qualifiers, Maheshwari scored a national record of 121 points and finished fourth to make it to the six-person final. Ganemat Sekhon, 24th with 115, and Areeba Khan, 47th with 111, both failed to qualify for the final round. In the men's skeet event, none of the three Indian shooters made it beyond the qualifiers. The Tokyo Olympian Mairaj Ahmed was the best-placed Indian during the qualifiers with the 75th position and the former Asian champion Angadvir Singh Bajwa was 77th while Sheeraj Sheikh finished in the 79th position. The privilege to play the final round was for the top six athletes. Indian trap shooters failed to add to their country's quotas at Doha this week. Indian shooters have got 21 of the 24 possible quotas, including all possible eight quotas each in rifle and pistol events. This is India's best-ever quota haul in shooting for any edition of the Olympics, surpassing the count of 15 from Tokyo 2020. (ANI)
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