Earlier in the day, 18-year old teenager Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar had won India’s 13thTokyo quota in the Men’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions with a bronze winning performance.

This is now India’s best ever quota haul for the Olympic Games in Shooting by miles, beating the 12 won for Rio 2016.

Angad, a joint world record holder, won gold piping his senior mate 6-5 in a Shoot-off after both had tied at 56 hits apiece in the 60-shot final. Kuwait’s Habib Saud won bronze and the third available quota place.

This was after both overcame a marathon eight-way Shoot-off for three final qualification spots. Mairaj won that one hitting 38 birds straight to overcome Habib who missed his 38th, even has Angad bagged the sixth and final spot hitting 25 straight.

Both Mairaj and Angad had posted scores of 120 out of 125 in qualification.

Speaking on behalf of both after the effort, Mairaj said, “It was not easy, particularly in the qualifying Shoot-off but I was very confident and had prepared well for this competition. So had Angad and I was very confident of him as well. Before the competition I had told everyone that both Angad and me would win quotas and I am happy that it came true.”

Also, this is the first time India has been crowned Asian Champion in Skeet Shooting. It is also India’s best ever quota haul in Skeet shooting, after Mairaj had won a quota in the previous edition.

In the morning Aishwary in his debut stint at the senior level, broke through with the help of a string of strong performances in the year. He shot 1168 in the 120-shot qualification round and never went outside the top eight.

It was a top quality final with a Chinese world number three and a Korean world number nine besides an experienced Yuri Yurkov of Kazakhstan and the in-form Mahyar Sedaghat of Iran who had made it to the Men’s 10m Air Rifle final as well in this competition earlier.

There were in-fact two Chinese in the final but they could not claim quotas as China had exhausted their maximum two in the event and the Korean Kim Jonghyun had also sealed his quota at the Munich World Cup earlier in the year.

That left shooters from Iran, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Thailand besides Aishwary, fighting for the three available Tokyo berths.

Aishwary, used to big finals through the wonderful year that he is having, shot the final like he belonged forever, getting progressively stronger through the course of the 45-shot final.

His splits were 151.7 after the first 15 Kneeling position shots, 156.3 after the same number of shots in the Prone position, before finishing with 449.1 to claim bronze.The Iranian and Kazakh claimed the other two finishing fifth and sixth respectively.

Aishwary also won the Team bronze in the event, combining with Chain Singh (1155) and Parul Kumar (1154).

India therefore ends their pursuit of Olympic quotas coming back with six quotas from this competition to add to the nine they had won earlier.

There was more cheer for India as they pulled off yet another 1-2 in the 10m Air Pistol Mixed Team competition. The pair of Manu Bhaker and Abhishek Verma winning the gold medal match 16-10 over compatriots Yashaswini Singh Deswal and Saurabh Chaudhary.

The junior Air Pistol Mixed team of Esha Singh and Sarabjot Singh also won their event with a facile 16-10 victory over the Korean pair of Minseo Kim and Yunho Sung who settled for silver.

Other Indian medals

Men’s Skeet-Angad, Mairaj and Smit Singh won the team silver

Women’s Skeet- Darshna Rathore (placed 10thwith score of 114), Ganemat Sekhon (11th with 113) and Saniya Sheikh (12th with 112) won bronze (339)