BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 49 of 144

Correct — A, Gold. On 14 October 2022 Rudrankksh Balasaheb Patil won the men's 10 m air rifle title at the ISSF World Shooting Championships held in Egypt's New Administrative Capital outside Cairo. Danilo Sollazzo of Italy took silver and Sheng Lihao of China took bronze. Patil was 18 at the time — he was born on 16 December 2003 in Thane, Maharashtra — and the win made him only the second Indian ever to become world champion in the event, after Abhinav Bindra, who won the same title at Zagreb in 2006. The gold mattered for a second reason that the news coverage led with: the Cairo championship was an official qualifying event for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, so the title also earned India a quota place in men's 10 m air rifle. That distinction is worth fixing in memory — an Olympic quota is won by the athlete but belongs to the country, and the national federation decides later who actually shoots at the Games. Two days after the individual final, on 16 October, Patil won a second gold in the men's 10 m air rifle team event alongside Arjun Babuta and Kiran Ankush Jadhav; those were the only two golds India won at the championship, which the country finished with 2 gold, 4 silver and 3 bronze at senior level while China topped the table with 12 golds. The result also carried Patil to world number one in the ISSF men's 10 m air rifle ranking in 2022 — a striking arc for a shooter who began in chess and football before switching to the range, and who was still an undergraduate at the University of Mumbai when he became world champion. The championship itself ran from 12 to 27 October 2022 over 78 events, with 1,088 competitors from 88 nations, and India's junior shooters added further medals, Ramita taking the women's junior 10 m air rifle gold with Tilottama Sen third.

• (b)Silver — Silver in the men's 10 m air rifle at Cairo went to Danilo Sollazzo of Italy, the shooter Patil beat in the gold-medal contest. Candidates who half-remember the story often downgrade an Indian result to silver on the assumption that the podium's top step usually goes to a Chinese, Korean or European shooter — a reasonable prior in this sport, and wrong here.
• (c)Bronze — Bronze went to Sheng Lihao of China, who would go on to become one of the dominant rifle shooters of the cycle. Bronze is also the safe-looking guess for anyone who remembers only that 'an Indian was on the podium at Cairo', since India won more silvers and bronzes than golds at this championship — four and three respectively against two golds.
• (d)None of the above — This option only works if Patil finished outside the top three or did not compete, and neither is true: he won the individual title on 14 October 2022 and a second gold in the team event on 16 October. Treat a 'none of the above' option as a genuine fourth candidate rather than filler, but do not reach for it as a hedge when you can place the athlete on the podium. On a paper with a one-third negative mark, guessing this option because the name is unfamiliar costs more than leaving the question blank.

The 10 m air rifle is an International Shooting Sport Federation event fired at a bullseye target ten metres away with a 4.5 mm calibre air rifle weighing no more than 5.5 kg, from the standing position only. Competition is decided in two stages: a 60-shot qualification, scored in decimals to one-tenth of a ring, followed by a 24-shot final in which the eight qualifiers start again from zero and are progressively eliminated. It has been an Olympic event for both men and women since the 1984 Los Angeles Games and has featured at the ISSF World Championships since 1970. The World Championships are held every four years and are deliberately staggered two years away from the Olympics; the ISSF World Cup series runs annually and is a lower tier, which is why 'World Championship' and 'World Cup' must never be treated as interchangeable in an exam answer. Since scores at the top are separated by fractions of a ring, results turn on posture, breathing and trigger release rather than on power, and shooters routinely hit above 630 in a 60-shot qualification. Air rifle sits inside a wider Olympic shooting programme that also includes 10 m air pistol, 25 m rapid fire pistol, 50 m rifle three positions, trap and skeet, together with the mixed-team air rifle and air pistol events added at Tokyo 2020 — and it is in the 10 m airgun events that India has been consistently competitive.

This is a pure recall item, and the useful thing is the filing system rather than the fact. Sports current affairs in a State PCS paper cluster around four hooks — an Indian first, a world title, an Olympic or Asian Games medal, and a national record — and Cairo 2022 hit two of them at once, because it produced only India's second-ever world champion in the event and simultaneously opened India's Paris 2024 quota account. If you can attach a result to a hook of that kind you will remember it; if you file it as 'some shooting event in Egypt' you will not. Two discriminations are worth carrying beyond this question. First, keep the ISSF World Championships (every four years, Cairo 2022, Baku 2023) apart from the annual ISSF World Cup, where Patil also won golds in 2023 — a paper that asks about one and is answered from the other loses the mark. Second, remember that the previous Indian world champion in this event, Abhinav Bindra at Zagreb in 2006, is far more famous for his Beijing 2008 Olympic gold, so the two achievements are easy to blur; the world title and the Olympic title are different competitions two years apart.

• Rudrankksh Balasaheb Patil won the men's 10 m air rifle gold at the ISSF World Shooting Championships on 14 October 2022; Danilo Sollazzo (Italy) took silver and Sheng Lihao (China) bronze
• He is the second Indian world champion in the event after Abhinav Bindra, who won the 10 m air rifle title at the 2006 ISSF World Shooting Championships in Zagreb
• The Cairo championship was a qualifying event for the Paris 2024 Olympics, so the gold secured an Olympic quota place — quota places accrue to the country, not to the individual shooter
• Patil was born on 16 December 2003 in Thane, Maharashtra, and was 18 when he won the title; he went on to top the ISSF world ranking in men's 10 m air rifle in 2022
• He won a second gold on 16 October 2022 in the men's 10 m air rifle team event with Arjun Babuta and Kiran Ankush Jadhav — India's only two golds at the championship
• India finished the senior competition with 2 gold, 4 silver and 3 bronze; China led with 12 golds, followed by Norway with 7
• The championship was held from 12 to 27 October 2022 in Egypt's New Administrative Capital near Cairo, across 78 events, with 1,088 competitors from 88 nations
• Event specification: 10 metres, 4.5 mm calibre air rifle of at most 5.5 kg, standing position only, 60-shot qualification plus a 24-shot elimination final; Olympic since the 1984 Los Angeles Games
• The World Championship sequence runs Changwon 2018, Cairo 2022 and Baku 2023, while the ISSF World Cup is a separate annual series — Patil won World Cup individual and mixed-team golds at Cairo in 2023 and two bronzes at Bhopal the same year
• India's junior shooters also took 10 m air rifle medals at the 2022 championship: Ramita won the women's junior gold with Tilottama Sen third, and India took the men's junior team gold through Sri Karthik Sabari Raj, Divyansh Singh Panwar and Vidit Jain
• Abhinav Bindra converted his 2006 world title into the 10 m air rifle gold at Beijing 2008, which remains India's first individual Olympic gold medal in any sport

• Mixing up the ISSF World Championships, held every four years, with the annual ISSF World Cup, where the same shooters win separate medals
• Confusing Abhinav Bindra's 2006 Zagreb world title with his 2008 Beijing Olympic gold — different competitions, two years apart
• Assuming a quota place means the winning shooter is automatically selected for the Olympics; the place belongs to the country and selection follows separately

BPSC asks sports as a bare fact — which medal, how many medals, which city, which player — and often ties it to Bihar or to an Indian first, so it rewards a candidate who keeps a running list of Indian podium finishes with dates. UPSC used to ask exactly this kind of item in the 1990s and 2000s, matching sportspersons to disciplines or naming a world-championship winner, but has largely dropped named-result recall from Prelims in favour of conceptual and analytical questions.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who was the first Indian to win a gold medal in the 10 m air rifle event at an ISSF World Shooting Championship?

  • (a)Gagan Narang
  • (b)Abhinav Bindra
  • (c)Rudrankksh Patil
  • (d)Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore

  Answer(b) Abhinav Bindra — he won the 10 m air rifle world title at Zagreb in 2006, two years before his Beijing Olympic gold; Rudrankksh Patil became the second at Cairo in 2022.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Rudrankksh Balasaheb Patil's gold at the 2022 ISSF World Shooting Championships was significant because it also secured for India:

  • (a)A quota place for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games
  • (b)Hosting rights for the next World Championship
  • (c)A place in the ISSF World Cup Final
  • (d)Direct qualification for the 2022 Asian Games

  Answer(a) A quota place for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games — the Cairo championship was an official Paris 2024 qualifying event.