Young Indian shooters had a profitable day at the Asian Airgun Championship when they won 2 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze on Day 3 of the competition. India now has a total of 5 gold, 3 silver and 1 bronze medals with half the competition still to go.
Manu Bhaker won her second gold of the tournament when she won the yellow metal in the Women’s 10m Air Pistol. Manu shot a score of 239 against Hong Kong’s Shing Ho Ching’s 237.9. UAE’s Wafa Alali bagged the bronze. Shri Nivetha of India, who had also reached the final, finished sixth.
In the men’s event, all three Indians made the finals. Saurabh Chaudhary topped with 587, Ravinder Singh was fourth to qualify with 578 and Abhishek Verma ranked lowest to qualify. But he was the only one to land a medal. Abhishek shot 240.7 and lost out to Korea’s Mose Kim by 0.2 points to settle for silver. Saurabh went down to bronze medalist Taehwan Lee of Korea in a shoot-off to finish fourth with 198.8 while Ravinder was seventh with 136.3 points. However, the trio picked up the team gold over the Koreans with a total of 1742.
The women’s pistol team also won a bronze to further bolster India’s tally.