Published>Thu, Oct 14 10 06:56 AM
It was a simple mistake that had cost rifle shooter Matt Emmons a gold medal at the Athens Olympics. Leading comfortably till the final shot, Emmons had shot at the Lane 3 target, instead of Lane 2, his slotted one, and finished eighth in the three-positions event.
Something similar happened at the Kadarpur range on Sunday. Only this time the men in question were Indian team mates at full bore event ? Major Praveen Dahiya and Subedar Sushil Ghale. The error, called crossfire, happened on the first day of the event, when the former army snipers missed their target and hit the adjacent one. They were docked five penalty points each.
But to their credit, they finished 12th overall in the pairs event, a big improvement from their last-place finish during the test event at the same venue in the run up to the Games.
"It was down to our inexperience. Both of us crossfired. We were snipers in the army. But this is a new event for us," Major Dahiya told The Indian Express on Wednesday. Had we not lost those 10 points we would have finished higher up on the table today," Dahiya added.
TS Dhillon, who had been guiding the team, said that the shooters got their rifles in the eleventh hour. India is fielding a team in the full bore event for the first time at the Commonwealth Games. Their one-month training schedule in England was scrapped because they did not get their visas. Their rifles, requisitioned much in advance, landed only on September 26. "It (crossfire) happens sometimes when the shooters reload. These targets are really close to each other," Dhillon said.
Dahiya preferred to forget the embarrassing episode. "We were lying 17th at one point. So to finish where we did was good considering that we got our rifles just a week before the Games started. We were competing against shooters who have been taking part in major international events for years now," Dahiya said.
Source: Web Search
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