Maheshwari Chauhan raised India's record number of Olympic quota places to 21 as she took silver in the Skeet Women event at the final Olympic Championship Shotgun in Doha, with the second Paris 2024 place being secured by Sweden's fourth-placed Victoria Larsson.
The two Skeet Men quota places on offer in the Qatari capital were earned by Estonia's 22-year-old Peter Juerisson and 24-year-old Eduard Yechshenko of Kazakhstan.
The day was additionally marked by the awarding of the ISSF Gold Medal to the President of the Qatar Shooting and Archery Association, Dr Mishaal Ibrahim Al Nasr, following a hugely successful event in which a total of 433 athletes competed. The presentation was made by ISSF President Luciano Rossi.
In what was her first ISSF final, Chauhan (pictured) fell just short of gold after losing 4-3 in a shoot-off with Chile's Francisca Crovetto Chadid, after both had finished on 54 in the 60-shot final.
“I am thrilled”, Chauhan told ISSF TV. “There has been a lot of hard work over the years to get here. I am a bit bummed about the shoot off, but overall, it has been very satisfying”.
Chauhan had qualified fourth best for the final with a national record of 121. Chadid had already secured an Olympic quota place at the 2023 World Championships, and China's Jiang Yiting, who finished third, was also ineligible as her nation had already earned their maximum of quotas in the event.
So the chase for the two Paris 2024 places came down to the four other finalists - Chauhan, Larsson, who was top qualifier, Kazakhstan's 2023 World Cup final champion Assem Orynbay and Azerbaijan's Rigina Meftakhetdinova. The quota destinations were confirmed after the Kazakh and Azerbaijan athletes exited in sixth and fifth place respectively.
With Sweden's Rio 2016 silver medallist Marcus Svensson the only one of the six finalists in the Skeet Men to have gained an Olympic quota place, the tension was high. Particularly so for the two athletes for whom this was the first ISSF final - Ukraine's Maksym Piven and Pakistani's 39-year-old Usman Chand.
Piven was the first of the six finalists to be eliminated and was followed by Nicolas Lejeune of France, leaving three athletes in pursuit of the two key places. The next round proved decisive as Chand, who had excelled up to that point, missed two out of his four final efforts, to finish with a total of 34 from 40. All three of his remaining opponents finished by hitting their four final targets, and so the Pakistan athlete was left to turn reflectively away - so close and yet so far.
For Juerisson and Yechshenko, who had topped qualifying on 123 after winning a five-man shoot-off, the pressure was reduced and they finished respectively in silver and bronze position behind the Swede, who earned gold ahead of his Estonian rival by a margin of 55-53.