In A First, Iranian Woman Shooter Wins A World Cup Bronze

Iran's Haniyeh Rostamiyan created history on Sunday by becoming the first woman pistol shooter from her country to win a World Cup medal.

Haniyeh grabbed bronze in the women's 25m pistol event at the ISSF World Cup in New Delhi. The Irani lost silver to Chinese shooter Jingjing Zhang for the second position. She had also competed during the 10m Air Pistol Mixed Team Qualification at the 18th Asian Games in Palembang, Indonesia Aug 2018.

"I have been shooting for about eight years now and this is my first World Cup medal in the senior category," she said. "Maybe I could have won the shoot-off, but we don't get enough ammunition to train separately for the shoot-offs," Haniyeh told TOI after her match.

"We don't train with bullets most of the times. But we are doing our best despite bad training," Haniyeh said.

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Iranian women have been taking a leap forward in shooting arena for a long time now, breaking the glass-ceiling in every possible way. Even though it is not easy for shooters in Iran to train for 50m and 25m events because of the sanctions by the USA. Iran cannot import bullets from the leading manufacturers, hence, the biggest challenge is of relying on Iran made bullets, which are not up to the mark for the international-standard pistols. Most of the times, they rely on dry practice (shooting without firing bullets).

"We don't train with bullets most of the times. But we are doing our best despite bad training," Haniyeh said.

International Shooting Sport Federation ISSF World Cup 2019, is being held in the National Capital Delhi with 500 athletes from 60 nations assembled here to fight for a place at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

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Feature Image Credit: Haniyeh Rostamiyan/Instagram

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