By Harpal Singh Bedi
Asian Games champion Rahi Sarnobat, shot to glory and gold as she claimed 25M Pistol title piping Rio Olympic winner Anna Korakaki (Greece) to earn India the first yellow medal in the ISSF Shooting World Cup in Osijek ,Croatia on Monday.
India now has one Gold, one-silver and two bronze medals in the tournament so far.
Rahi was third place and her compatriot Manu Bhaker was at ninth after the precision round on Sunday.,
This morning, both the Indians shot stunning rapid-fire rounds of 296/300 to storm into the finals in a field that included all the Rio Olympic medallists in the event. Rahi totaled 591 to Manu’s 588 as Bulgarian Antoaneta Kostadinova topped with 593. Anna Korakaki qualified sixth with 584.
In the final, Rahi opened with a five and never looked back. Her scores in the final read: 5,2,5,5,5,5,3,3,2,4.
The Indian ace was unlucky to have missed finals world record score of 40 by one hit. She shot 39 hits out of a possible 50, including four perfect series of 5/5 hits in a row, to leave silver medal winning Frenchwoman Mathilde Lamollle way behind on 31 hits.
In the Women’s Sport Pistol as it is called, a score of 10.2 or above is considered a hit.
Rio Olympics silver medallist in the 10M Air Pistol, Russian Vitalina Batsarashkina, won bronze with 28 hits, bowing out after the 9th 5-shot series. Anna Korakaki finished fifth while Manu Bhaker, finished seventh. This was Manu’s second individual final of the competition.
The final consists of 10 series of 5 rapid fire shots each, with the eighth placed shooter being eliminated after the fourth series and then one lowest rank shooter after each subsequent 5-s ,till two shooters are left to fight for Gold after the ninth series.
“After I got assurance about the gold, it was more about technicalities for me in the last few series as I wanted to try out a few things so I was doing that.” Rahi was quoted as saying after winning the Gold
” It was not so much about the medal for me in this competition because I was trying out a few things which I am going to do in the Olympic Games and this is the final competition before that. This competition was absolutely not about performance or medal. It was more about trying out things and finalizing everything before the Olympics for the last time and that was just that.”
“ This gives me the assurance that I am on the right track and I have to keep working on this up to and after the Olympic Games as well.” She added