India ace shooter Manu Bhaker on Tuesday bagged the gold medal in women’s 10m air pistol event, while Vivaan Kapoor and Manisha Keer won the second-highest honour in junior trap mixed event at the Asian Shooting Championships in Doha.
Early in the day, Deepak Kumar won the third-highest prize in men’s 10m air rifle event, thus ensuring India’s 10th Tokyo Olympics quota in shooting. After Divyansh Singh Panwar, Deepak is the second Indian shooter to earn an Olympic quota in the event.
Deepak Kumar @Deepak_g_arya in finals of Men’s 10m Air Rifle on day one of 14th Asian Shooting Championship in #Qatar @Tokyo2020 quota on the line @Asian_Shooting
— NRAI (@OfficialNRAI) November 5, 2019
It is to note that Manu and any other Indian shooter was ineligible to win an Olympic quota as the country has already exhausted them in earlier competitions. She put up a dominant showing, shooting 584 in qualification and 244.3 in the final to take gold. Chinese Asian Games champion Wang Qian took the silver with a score of 242.8.
Meanwhile, Yashaswini Singh Deswal, who is the other shooter apart from Manu to have won a quota in the event, shot 578 in the qualifiers and finished sixth in the final with a score of 157.4.
The third Indian in the event, Annu Raj Singh, shot 569 for a 20th place finish. The trio went on to win bronze in the team event with a score of 1,731, with Korea winning gold and China the silver.
Vivaan and Manisha beat the Chinese pair of Ting Zhang and Pengyu Chen 34-29 in the gold medal match. The latter had qualified for the final with a record score.
In women’s 10m air rifle, Anjum Moudgil missed the final by the smallest of margins while Apurvi Chandela finished 12th. Elavenil Valarivan, however, made it to the final and finished fifth with a score of 187.1.
In rifle and pistol events, the Indian shooters have so far secured 10 Tokyo Olympics quotas and are only behind China (25 quotas) and Korea (12) in the Asian region.