India's Mairaj gets silver at Rio shooting World Cup
Indian shooter Mairaj Ahmed Khan made a triumphant start at the ISSF World Cup by securing a silver medal in men's skeet event in Rio de Janeiro. Mairaj's victory gave India its very first skeet honour at a World Cup. Mairaj shot 122 in the qualifying, 15/16 in the semi-final round and later 14+1 in the gold medal match.
Mairaj Ahmad Khan was born in 1975 in Uttar Pradesh's Khurja region. Formerly a cricket player, he was named the skipper of the U-19 Uttar Pradesh team. He was later shifted by the Government of India to the skeet shooting discipline. A practicing shooter since 1998, he started competing only in 2003. He rose quickly in the sport, winning the national championship three times.
Skeet shooting is a shooting sport where participants, using shotguns, try to smash clay targets mechanically tossed into the air from two fixed stations at high speed from a variety of angles. Skeet shooting became a part of Olympics in 1968.
Arozepal Singh and Mairaj Ahmed Khan won India's lone gold medal in the team skeet event for men at the Commonwealth Shooting Championship. Arozepal and Mairaj had a combined score of 185 (93+92). They defeated England's Rory Warlow and Craig Lakey, who were only a point behind them. With 175 points, Bangladesh's Altamas Kabir and Nooruddin Salim won the bronze.
In 2012, Mairaj Khan was accused of poaching a Sambhar deer in his home state of UP. The shooter denied the charges claiming the photographs were morphed and that he was in a different country when accused.
Skeet shooter Mairaj Ahmad Khan secured a Rio Olympics quota seat for India in the ongoing ISSF Shotgun World Championship. Khan finished in the sixth position in the final with a total score of 122. This was India's first quota place for the 2016 Olympics in the shotgun category. The other quota went to Germany's Ralf Buchheim who was 8th in the qualification round.
