Olympic silver medallist Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore on Sunday made a triumphant return to competition retaining the double trap title in the National Shooting Shot Gun Championships which concluded in New Delhi.
Rathore, who went into the final with a five-point lead over his nearest rivals Uttar Pradesh's defending champion Moraad Ali Khan and Chhattisgarh's Ronjan Sodhi, scored 46 in the final for a total of 183 (137 + 46).
Moraad settled for the silver behind the Olympic hero with a score of 176 (132 + 44) and Sodhi claimed the bronze 172 (132 + 40) in fading light at the Dr Karni Singh Shooting ranges.
The win also avenged Rathore's loss to Moraad in the 2002 National Games in Hyderabad.
The final was halted twice due to poor light conditions. Shooting resumed after a brief break when the lone mercury vapour light tower was switched on. But the marksmen were still hampered by poor visibility before the proceedings was completed in fading light.
Rathore was virtually assured of the title going into the final. The pressure on the Army Major eased considerably after the first few rounds with Moraad losing track of the targets.
The 34-year-old himself missed the target in the first and seventh rounds but soon raised the bar for the other finalists smashing targets into pink smoke with his favourite Perazzi gun, with a modified grip.
Rathore was happy that his experimentation with the new grip worked out in challenging conditions.
"I was told about some serious flaws just a few months before Olympics when I underwent really intense preparation but there was no time to rectify my flaws before the Olympics.
And we decided to continue with the faults with which I even reached the world no. 1 ranking," Rathore said.
"Here I experimented with my new grip, new way of holding the trigger and the gun. I am happy to make progress," he said.
Rathore was also happy to have satisfied his growing number of supporters who came to watch the star in action.
"People came here to watch the Olympic silver winner in action and see me make a good score and I did not want to disappoint them," he said.
Rathore said for him the main competition next year was the World Championships in Italy in May.
"I want to settle every thing before by next with three important competitons coming up in 2006 -- the Asian Games, the Commonwealth Games and the World Shooting Championships."
The fight for the silver evaporated soon with world number 22 Moraad showing his experience to score a 44 compared to Ronjan's 10 misses in the final.
The other impressive show of the day came from teeanger Mohammed Ashab. Ashab shot 153 to finish sixth but dominated the junior event where he won the title with a new national record score of 120.
The junior silver went to another promising youngster A D Peoples, who had earlier won both the senior and junior skeet titles. A S Pratap Singh claimed the bronze.
