Tangier (Morocco), April 2 Indian shooters' disappointing performance continued, as both mixed team pairs delivered subpar performances to finish far down in the standings, capping a forgettable outing at the ISSF Shotgun World Cup here on Thursday.
Continuing India's streak of underwhelming results in the men's and women's skeet and trap events, the mixed doubles pair of Olympian Prithviraj Tondaiman and Kirti Gupta could only manage an aggregate of 134, finishing in a disappointing 18th place out of a field of 33 teams.
Only the top four teams advance to the finals.
Tondaiman scored 69 (24, 22, 23) in his three rounds of 25 each, totaling 75, while Gupta missed 10 clay targets to finish with 65 (22, 22, 21).
The other Indian pair, Olympians Kynan Chenai and Rajeshwari Kumari, also had a subpar outing, combining for a modest 130 to finish 25th. Chenai shot 68 (25, 21, 22), while Rajeshwari managed 62 (18, 22, 22) in the season-opening World Cup -- an event whose scores carry significant weight for selection for the Asian Games in Japan later this year.
With the next Shotgun World Cup scheduled in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in May, India has already announced their squad, and notably, none of the shooters from the current event have been retained.
The national squad's dismal showing at the Tangier World Cup could prove costly, potentially knocking several shooters out of Asian Games contention, while handing the next batch – set to compete at the Almaty World Cup – a crucial opportunity to stake their claim for a berth at the continental showpiece in Aichi-Nagoya this September–October.
Amid the team's underwhelming showing here, the omission of the most experienced trap shooter, World Championships bronze medallist and world No. 4 Zoravar Singh – cited as "workload management" – remains a questionable decision.
Fresh from winning a World Championships bronze, Zoravar lived up to expectations by reaching the medal round, only to narrowly miss out on a podium finish.
Like virtually every high-performance athlete, he could not sustain peak form, enduring a dip at the National Championships and subsequent trials in Delhi and Bhopal, which led to him missing selection for the season's first two World Cups.
