JOIN US India’s 10M air pistol shooters on Sunday put up a disastrous show at the Asian shooting championships here to leave the team management fuming.
No Indian was within sniffing distance of a final spot which would have provided an opportunity to bag a quota for this year’s London Olympics.
Commonwealth Games gold medallist Omkar Singh was way below his personal best as he shot a low 572/600 to bow out of contention.
Having shot 584 to win the 2010 Commonwealth Games gold in New Delhi, Omkar had a realistic chance of winning a medal in Doha.
He started the second qualification relay with a series of 97 but then slipped badly in the second series to shoot 93. After that it was all downhill with scores of 97, 96, 97 and the worst card saved for the last where he managed only two 10’s.
He ended his qualification campaign with an 8 of his last shot for a last card of 92.
It wasn’t a great show in the first relay either, with Amanpreet Singh shooting 571 and Om Prakash a lowly 567. So poor was the combined effort that India finished ninth in the team standings, a massive 36 points behind gold medal winners Korea, who totalled 1746/1800.
The performance of the Minimum Qualifying Score (MQS) shooters was better than the team with Amit Pilaniya shooting 574 and veteran Vivek Singh shooting 572.
The junior team of Akshay Jain, Vivek Kumar and Karanpreet Randhawa marched over their seniors with a bronze medal. Their combined score of 1701 was just 9 points lower than the senior team.
Also making it a good day for the juniors was the performance of the 50M prone team. Navdeep Singh Rathore won gold for India with a score of 588 in qualification and 101.3 in the final.
Rathore went into the final two points behind China’s Lilong Liu but made up the gap. In windy conditions, Rathore kept it simple and ran away with the gold.
Sanahal Huidrom won the individual bronze after a nerve-wracking final with another Chinese Jiaze Liu. Both had qualified on a score of 582.