India’s Rudrankksh Balasaheb Patil won which medal in Men’s 10 m Air Rifle at the ISSF World Championship in Cairo?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

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.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) 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 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) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2023 Q49 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q49 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer