Indian shooting was at its brilliant best as the team swept the gold medals in the mixed air rifle and air pistol events, along with a silver to boot, to provide a heady climax for the World Cup in Munich on Thursday.
By capturing five of the 10 gold medals on offer, Indian shooting was able to assert its class and firepower. China did win nine medals, but had only two gold, while Russia, Czech Republic and Greece won the other gold medals.
Third in a row
It was the third World Cup in a row that India topped the medals table, after the ones in Delhi in Beijing. India was joint first with Hungary with three gold medals in Delhi in February.
In the Beijing World Cup, India had topped with three gold medals and a silver, ahead of China which had two gold, two silver and a bronze.
It was total domination in Munich. India had also won two Olympic quota places through Rahi Sarnobat and Manu Bhaker to make it a satisfactory outing in Germany.
Quite remarkably, the team of Anjum Moudgil and Divyansh Singh Panwar won the mixed air rifle gold, ahead of another Indian team of Apurvi Chandela and Deepak Kumar.
Saurabh Chaudhary and Manu Bhaker made it a hat-trick of gold medals, following the ones won in the World Cups in Delhi and Beijing.
There will be another set of selection trials and domestic competition in Kumar Surendra Singh Championship before the team for the last World Cup in Rio de Janeiro in August is finalised.
The results: Mixed air rifle: 1. India (Anjum Moudgil, Divyansh Singh Panwar) 16 (631.9) 629.1; 2. India-A (Apurvi Chandela, Deepak Kumar) 2 (630.2) 629.0; 3. Belarus (Maria Martynova, Ilia Charheika) 16 (627.9) 630.0; 4. Austria (Olivia Hofmann, Alexander Schmirl) 14 (629.7) 628.5.
Mixed air pistol: 1. India (Manu Bhaker, Saurabh Chaudhary) 17 (591) 586; 2. Ukraine (Olena Kostevych, Oleh Omelcuk) 9 (583) 582; 3. China (Wang Qian, Wang Mengyi) 16 (578) 580; 4. Poland (Natalia Krol, Szymon Woutyna) 14 (574) 576; 11. India-A (Heena Sidhu, Shahzar Rizvi) 574.