India's wait for a London Olympics berth from the Asian Shooting Championships ended today with Imran Hassan Khan bagging a quota place in the 50m rifle 3 positions event on the final day here.
Sanjeev Rajput, who has already booked a ticket to London, made a double whammy for India by winning gold in the same event. Gagan Narang, who has also qualified for the London Games, battled his way to bronze to bring cheers to the Indian camp.
Khan finished fifth but as all the other shooters above him had already bagged Olympic quotas, the qualifying spot for the London Olympics came his way. The Indian
team also won the team gold.
In windy conditions, Rajput made the best start with a score of 394 in the 40-shot prone series. Khan too put in a creditable effort shooting 392/400 to put himself in contention. Narang though did not start well with a 380. But he came back strongly in the second series. He shot 380 in standing which was the highest score amongst the eight eventual finalists.
Rajput shot 372 which ensured he led the pack going into the kneeling series while Khan shot two points more with 374. Rajput shot a series of 382 in kneeling to end with a qualifying score of 1148.
Korea's Jonghyun Kim and Jinseop Han were placed second and third with an identical score of 1142. Khan finished his kneeling series with a score of 373 to qualify in fourth place with a combined total of 1139.
Narang shot scores of 93, 95, 94 and 92 in kneeling to finish with an aggregate score of 1134. And that proved crucial as he held his nerve in testing conditions to climb up the leaderboard.
Despite trailing both the Koreans by eight points, Narang fought his way through to come into the reckoning for a podium finish. A 4.2 by Jinseop on his sixth shot gave Narang the chance to catch up.
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