Para Shooting World Cup: Avani Lekhara Misses Out on Gold For Minute Difference

During the 10m AR Standing SH1 Finals at the first World Cup of the year, Avani Lekhara came within 0.1 points of winning the gold medal.

At the current World Shooting Para Sports World Cup at Changwon International Shooting Range in Korea, Indian Paralympic gold medalist Avani Lekhara took home the silverware on Thursday. In the standings for the SH1 finals for the 10m air rifle, Lekhara came up only 0.1 points short of winning the gold.

Brief details about the performance

The 21-year-old shooter finished with an overall rating of 250.1, losing out on first place to Sweden's Anna Benson but also earning India's 100th medal in the Para Shooting sports.

She got 626.5 earlier in the qualifying rounds, placing third.

The Changwon 2023 World Cup, which offers allocations for the Paris 2024 Paralympics, serves as the World Shooting Para Sports season's opening event.

Her Career highlights

This medal adds up to Avani Lekhara's already excellent portfolio of winning medals.

Career highlights:

1 gold - Tokyo Paralympics 2021

1 bronze - Tokyo Paralympics 2021

2 gold - Chateauroux Para Shooting World Cup 2022

1 silver - Changwon Para Shooting World Cup 2022

1 silver - Al Ain 2021 World Shooting Para Sport World Cup 2021

1 silver - Croatia Para Shooting World Cup in 2019

World record score of 250.6 in women’s 10m air rifle standing SH1

World no.1 in Women’s 10m Air Rifle standing SH1

Avani on controlling the pressure

Avani Lekhara recently revealed her ways to cope with the mental pressure before big games in an interview with Sportstar.

"You can’t control everything. When you’re at a stage where there’s so much pressure and expectation from you, you can’t cave in and forget the purpose behind why you are where you are. I try to plan for everything that can go wrong and what I can do to counter it,” she explained.

For Tokyo, I made an hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute schedule so that I knew at what time I had to do which activity and made provisions for what could go wrong. But things I didn’t plan for still went wrong, and I had to control my anxiety. It taught me that there is always a solution,” she finished.