Youth Shooter Shines: Yugan Sakthivel Muthukumaar Takes Trap Gold

It was a crisp afternoon in Porpetto, Italy, when 15‑year‑old Yugan Sakthivel Muthukumaar stepped up to the trap range and, after a breath‑holding pause, sent 27 of the 30 clay targets soaring past him. The score was enough to hand him the gold medal in the men’s trap event and, more importantly, to deliver India its first podium finish of the competition.

Yugan’s journey to the final wasn’t a straight line. He qualified sixth after posting a solid 114 out of 125 in the prelims, then survived a tense shoot‑off to lock his place among the eight finalists. In the showdown, his steady hand and calm demeanor edged out Italy’s own Francesco Tanfoglio by a single target, a margin that felt both thrilling and nerve‑wracking.

He wasn’t the only Indian hoping for a breakthrough. Fellow juniors Arjun and Vinay Pratap Singh Chandrawat finished 12th and 13th respectively with scores of 112, while Udhav Singh Rathore placed 16th at 111. Though none of them made the medal round, their performances kept the Indian contingent in the mix.

On the women’s side, junior Asian champion Sabeera Haris was the lone Indian to crack the final. After a clutch shoot‑off that lifted her to sixth in qualification (108/125), she gave it her all in the medal race but managed nine hits out of 15, settling for sixth place. Bhavya Tripathi and Krishika Joshi came agonisingly close, both scoring 105 in qualifying and missing the cut‑off by the slimmest of margins.

Unfortunately, Indian shooters fell short in the junior skeet events – no one advanced to those finals. The Porpetto meet, the second junior ISSF World Cup of the year, follows the opening tournament in Cairo where India topped the medal tally with 16 medals, including five golds. The mixed team trap bronze earned by Zuhair Khan and Addya Katyal was the only shotgun medal for India in Cairo.

The final day in Porpetto will see the junior mixed‑team trap event, which promises one more shot at a medal before the tournament draws to a close on Saturday.

Yugan’s gold not only adds a shiny new trophy to his own cabinet but also lifts the spirits of a young Indian shooting squad eager to make its mark on the world stage.