Manavjit shoots his best to clinch gold

Published>Thu, Feb 25 10 11:19 AM

It was a golden day for India as world champion Manavjit Singh Sandhu stunned all competitors to grab the gold in the men's trap individual event at the Commonwealth Shooting Championships at the Dr Karni Singh Ranges on Wednesday.

India won the gold in all three events to stay atop the medals tally after the sixth day of the championships.

After shooting perfect 25 in all three qualifying rounds on Tuesday, Manavjit made a stunning start scoring 25 and 24 in the fourth and the fifth rounds respectively. The final round saw tough competition.

Manavjit was moving far ahead as others kept missing the birds.

As the pressure was building up on the contenders, Manavjit kept his focus on the targets and brought another 22 points in the final to make a total score of 146 and claimed the top honours along with his personal best score and the meet record.

Manavjit missed some birds at 144 and another at 145 but he shot the final bird to reach 146.

Reacting after his victory, Manavjit said, ''This is my personal best score. This is the first competition of the year for me. So, it is a nice feeling to start well. The crowd was very supporting and that instilled confidence in me.'' ''Generally the final round takes place in the evening but today it happened in the afternoon. The visibility was fantastic but it became cloudy and the light was a bit little less and brown,? he said.

Indian team's performance also impressed Manavjit. He said, ''It is good that we are winning so many gold medals here.Actually, we all wanted to win here and that is what kept everyone inspired.'' Asked about the newly- constructed Dr Karni Singh Ranges, Manavjit said, ''This is a world class venue. There are so many benefits when you have such facilities. More young shooters can use them and perform better for the country. I would like to thank the government for the infrastructure they have managed to put up.'' England's Aaron Heading was second with 143 points while Adam Vella of Australia registered 142 to win the bronze.

India dominated completely in the 25metre centre fire pistol men's individual event as Vijay Kumar, Mahender Singh and Viraj Singh clinched the top awards.

Vijay combined 286 and 294 in first and second stage to aggregate 580 in total to walk away with the gold. Mahender and Viraj won the silver and bronze.

In the 10m air rifle women's individual competition, Neha Sapte outdid Bangladeshi Sharmin Akhter Ratna and bagged the gold. Neha, appearing for her Class XII exams this year, got into rhythm after losing some crucial points and scored 101.1 in the final. Her qualification score was 395 as she got 99 each in all four rounds.

Neha said she suffered some balancing problems. ''I had some balancing problems initially but I corrected them.'' Ratna and Australia's Robyn Van Nus grabbed the silver and bronze.

Meanwhile, the Commonwealth Championships president Graeme Hudson announced on Wednesday that the badges will be counted in the total medals tally. ''Badges will be counted as medals. We noticed that the media is not counting the badges in the total medals tally so we decided to explain why the badges should be included in the list. That's how it works everywhere in the world,'' he said.

Reproduced From Mail Today. Copyright 2010. MTNPL. All rights reserved.

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