Parampal misses out as India's wait for Oly quota continues

Parampal Singh Guron narrowly missed out on a place in the final of the men's skeet event at the Asian Shooting Championship here to take the wait for an Olympic quota to another day.

Guron, who was in 13th place overnight with a score of 71/75, started the day with a perfect round of 25 to move into contention for a place in the final.

With four quota places on offer, Guron needed to shoot another perfect round, but he crucially dropped one target to finish with a score of 120/125.

The cut-off for the six-man final was at 121, which meant he finished 7th.
Mairaj Ahmed Khan shot a score of 119 to finish 13th while Asian Shotgun Championship winner Man Singh finished a lowly 28th after shooting 113/125.

2011 Dakar Rally Champion Nasser Al-Attiyah equalled the world record for qualification in skeet with a perfect score of 125/125. The Qatari shooter did not drop the tempo in the final either, shooting another perfect score of 25 to equal the final world record of 150/150 as well as clinch a quota.

Abdullah Alrashidi of Kuwait won the silver as well as the quota with a score of 147 while the bronze was won by Sheikh Saeed Almaktoum of UAE with 146.

Korea's Kwang Soo Cho clinched the final quota place with a score of 145. Qatar also won the team gold with a combined score of 362/375 while the Indian team of Guron, Khan and Singh came in at 6th place with a total of 352.

India's Gurpreet Singh and Pemba Tamang are in the hunt for a quota place after Day 1 of the men's rapid fire pistol event. Gurpreet shot a score of 291/300 to be in 4th place after the first course. But crucially there are two other shooters ahead of him on the same score that brightens his chances of reaching the final.

Pemba Tamang is also in with a chance after shooting 288/300 while Vijay Kumar, who has already bagged a quota for India, is one place behind him in 8th place with 286.
The rules of rapid fire do not allow carry-over of points into the final unlike all other shooting events.

The scores of all shooters will start at zero hence any shooter can win the gold irrespective of what score he shot in qualification.

Navdeep Singh Rathore could not repeat his gold medal- winning heroics of the 50m Rifle Prone(junior) as he finished 5th in the 50m junior men's 3 position event.
Rathore finished fifth after a combined total of 1233.3.

The gold went to Mahdi Jafaripouya of Iranwho who shot a combined score of 1250.
The Indian team of Rathore, Sanahal Huidrom and Vaibhav Sharma won the team bronze with a total of 3367 points behind China and Iran.