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Santiago 2023: Suman Sanghera, a promising US shooter, wins the qualification round in the 10 m Air Pistol but misses a medal.
Suman was the winner of the gold medal in Air Pistol in Lima in 2022 with a score of 571.
Suman Sanghera / Civilian Marksmanship Program
At 18, Suman Kaur Sanghera has been already a medal prospect for the USA in the Air Pistol shooting.
Though she finished sixth in her favourite event in the ongoing Pan Am Games in Santiago, she had the distinction of finishing at the top in the qualification round of the event with a score of 578.
Other shooters, who finished much behind her in the qualification round, however, exhibited great composure in the final to finish ahead of her. In the final, she went out of reckoning at the first elimination with a score of 153.6 to take the sixth position.
Suman is one of several players of Indian origin representing the US in the Santiago 2023 Pan Am Games. She competes in 10 m and 25 m Air Pistol events.
Among other players are Omni Kumar (tennis), Ajai Dhadwal, Mohan Gandhi, Parmeet Paul Singh and Mehtab Grewal (Hockey). The coach of the US hockey team is Harendra Singh.
Suman probably draws her inspiration from young Indian shooters who did remarkably well in the just concluded Asian games. Air Pistol has given India and shooters of Indian origin a big name. It was this event that gave India its first-ever individual Olympic Gold medal through Abhinav Bindra in the 2008 Beijing Games.
For Suman, it has been a year of mixed fortunes as she qualified for the Santiago Games by finishing sixth in the mixed team event in the World Cup held at Las Palmas in Lima early this year. Her team ended with 573. In the individual event, she finished with a score of 572 and in the subsequent final shootout with an individual score of 146, she was placed seventh.
Suman was the winner of the gold medal in Air Pistol in Lima in 2022 with a score of 571. In the elimination round of the final, she scored 250.5 and won the final shoot with a score of 16.
Her performance in the Baku World Cup 2023, both in the mixed team and individual Air Pistol 10 m events, was far from her own satisfaction. Shooting is a game of concentration and once you can keep your nerve, you hit the bull's eye more often than in some other competitions.
She was a picture of confidence in the qualification round in Santiago. But a lapse in the final relegated her to sixth position.
In 2022, in the Junior Women's competition, Suman finished a credible fourth with a score of 860 in the first round of qualification followed by 566 in the second round.
She has been training hard and hopes to make it to the Olympics sooner than later.
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