Asher Noria strikes gold at World Shooting Championship

While his mentor Ronjan Singh Sodhi came a cropper in the senior section, Asher Noria held his nerve to clinch gold in the men’s junior double trap event at the World Shooting Championship in Munich on Thursday.

In the process, the Hyderabad lad equalled Maltese William Chetcuti’s six-year-old world junior record of 146/150.

With his performance, he has once again proved that he is the ‘Next Big Thing’ in Indian shooting. The senior world record stands at 147, which is jointly held by Sodhi with four others. Noria was way ahead of silver medallists Alessandro Chianese, who shot 141 in the final. Bronze medal was clinched by Slovakia’s Filip Praj (140).

Earlier this year, Noria won gold for the second year in succession in the international shooting junior world cup at Suhl, Germany.
Incidentally, he is the only shooter in the world to ever have won this fiercely-contested championship twice on the trot.

The 17-year-old shot to prominence at the 2008 Youth Commonwealth Games in Pune where he clinched gold and in the process bettered Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore’s silver medal winning effort at Athens. Other Indians in fray in the same event, Shayan Masood (137) and Ankur Mittal (107), finished seventh and 18th respectively.

Meanwhile, his mentor Sodhi was way off the mark in the men’s double trap event. The world No.5 shot a poor 42 out of possible 50 in Round One from which he never recovered.

Though he bounced back with scored of 48 and 49 thereafter but it was too late for him to mount a challenge for a place in the final, finishing 23rd in the qualifiers.