Young Haryana markswoman Manu Bhaker brought cheers to the Indian camp by qualifying for the finals of the women’s 10M air pistol event with a third-place finish on the first day of competitions in the Olympic Games today.
Manu, gold medalist in the 2018 Commonwealth Games and a top performer in the World Cups of shooting, produced the extra effort needed at this level of competition to end up in third spot with 580 points in the 60-shot qualification round.
She came up with scores of 97, 97, 98, 96, 96 and 96 and struck the inner tens on 27 occasions, the highest among the qualifiers.
She will now compete for the medals tomorrow.
The top eight qualifiers was led by Veronika Major of Hungary who finished higher than second placed Oh Ye Jin of Korea on the basis of higher number or inner tens after both of them shot 580 points out of 600.
World Qualification record holder, bronze medal winner in the last Games in Tokyo, just about managed to make it to the finals as the eighth qualifier with a tally of 577 points.
However the rifle shooters were disappointing as both of India’s teams in the 10m mixed contest as well as Sarabjit Singh in the 10m air rifle failed to progress further.
Sarabjit perhaps was a bit unfortunate to miss out the qualification as he finished ninth and lost out to eighth-placed German shooter Walter Robin on the basis of the number of inner tens scored, the latter scoring one more than the Indian marksman.
The bigger disappointment came in what was touted as a good medal hunting ground for the Indian pairs in 10m mixed pairs pistol event.
Two Indian pairs took part in the event and both finished outside the top four qualifying spots for the medal round which too was held later in the day.
India’s lesser known of the two combinations, Ramita and Arjun Babuta shot 628.7 to end up sixth while the more recognized pair of Elavenil Valarivan and Sandeep Singh combined together for a total score of 313.7 to end up a lowly 12th.
Significantly, another Indian pair of Rudransh Patil and Narmada Raju, who are not here, hold the qualification world record of 635.8, set in Cairo last year, in this discipline.
Incidentally the shooting event in the Paris Games are being held at the Chateauroux Shooting Centre, which is more than two hours by train from the French capital.