Mon, Nov 15 10 03:53 PM
S S Ramaswamy Guangzhou, Nov 15 (PTI) Indian shooters flopped on a windy day at the Aoti Shooting range with the country''s first woman world champion Tejaswini Sawant and Gagan Narang ending up way off target in their respective events at the Asian Games here today. After collecting three silver medals and a bronze on the first two days of competition, Indian shooters found it hard to adjust to the swirling wind conditions today. According to foreign coach Stanislav Lapidus, this upset the apple cart of both the men''s and women''s rifle wielders in the 50m prone events. Vijay Kumar, meanwile, could not sustain the form he showed yesterday in the men''s 25m rapid fire pistol which is his pet event. Narang, who secured two silver medals in the 10m air rifle event on the opening day including the team honours, was second-best among Indians by finishing a lowly 24th with 587 points in the prone event. Tejaswini too flunked badly as she shot 588 to end up 11th while teammates Meena (586) and Lajja Gauswami (585) finished 14th and 16th individually while the team ended up fifth with 1759. Kumar, who won a bronze in the 10m air pistol despite qualifying eighth yesterday, was clearly not at his best and finished a distant 17th, behind teammates Rahul, who was 10th with 572, and Harpreet Singh (571, 11th). Kumar''s final tally was 568. There was some consolation for Narang as today''s 50m rifle prone is not the 27-year-old Commonwealth Games hero''s main event at the distance and his remaining hopes of adding to his and India''s medal kitty lies in the 50m three position competition to be held on November 18. Hariom Singh, who has already secured an Olympic berth in the same event at the Munich World Championship in August, was 13th from 54 shooters in the qualification stage by shooting 590 marks but this was way behind the 598 he fired at Munich and well behind the 594-595 he has been doing in the practice rounds. Third Indian entrant Surinder Singh Rathod was 27th with a tally of 586 and the Indian squad finished fifth in the team event held concurrently with a total of 1763 points, 22 gold medal winners North Korea who created an Asian record of 1785, bettering the earlier one by three points. South Korea''s Kim Hakman won the individual gold with 698.3, while Yuriy Melsitov of Kazakhstan (697.9) and China''s Tian Hui (593) won the silver and bronze. Lapidus said while the performance was not up to the mark, the weather conditions too affected the Indians. MORE PTI SSR PM
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