Chandela booked her quota place for the 2020 Games by finishing fourth at the women's ISSF World Championship in Changwon last September.
Without any pressure of winning quota place for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Apurvi Chandela gave her best shot to open the medal account for India. En route to her gold medal, Chandela shattered the world record in the women's 10m Air Rifle on Saturday.
Chandela booked her quota place for the 2020 Games by finishing fourth at the women's ISSF World Championship in Changwon last September. Anjum Moudgil was the other shooter securing the second quota place in the same event.
The 26-year-old Chandela produced her finest performance here at Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range, securing a card of 252.9 points to finish ahead of two Chinese shooters – Ruozhu Zhao (251.8) and Hong Xu (230.4). Not to forget that the earlier mark was set by Zhao only with 252.4 during the World Cup in Changwon, Korea, last April.
The Jaipur-born shooter, earlier in the day, advanced to the final by finishing fourth in the qualifying round with 629.3 points. Zhao topped the chart in qualification with 634. However, the Indian looked much more composed and confident in the final to script the history by leaving the reigning record holder as much as 1.1 points behind.
"It has been a bit tough but I've practiced hard for this day. A lot of important competitions are ahead now and I'm looking forward to bettering this performance further on my way to the 2020 Olympics," Chandela said.
Moudgil looked off colour on the day by finishing 12th with 628 points while Elavenil Valarivan finished 30th with 625.3 in the qualifications.
In her own words, the home crowd helped her a lot as she rallied to come back strongly with a 10.6 score in the 11th shot. She continued her domination and consolidated her position with 10.8 in the 18th shot.
The gold medallist at the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games opened up the gap with a series of 10.6, 10.8, 10.6, 10.8 respectively to ensure her third individual medal at a World Cup. Earlier, she won a bronze in 2015 Changwon World Cup in 2015 before winning silver at the ISSF World Cup Finals in the same year.
"I needed to push myself further as I have been performing consistently for the last one year," said the bronze medallist in the last Asian Games.
On her fierce competition within Indian teammates, Chandela described it as a healthy sign: "I looked at it in a way that I get motivated, push myself harder, I can't settle down at any score. The competition amongst us is good for all of us. It keeps me motivated," Chandela talked about Moudgil, Valarivan and Mehuli Ghosh, who is not part of Indian team here.
On her experience in the 2018 World Cup final in Munich, where she finished fourth after being in lead for most of the time, Chandela attributed her consistency to "meditation and visualisation practises".
"In Munich, I came down with a freak shot where trigger just got pressed. But I am happy that I could overcome that and did not let that get into my way today (Saturday). It's a long process that I have been working on. Now, I take more time as compared to the less time I used to take earlier," she said.
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 "Apurvi Chandela")
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