Harpal Singh Bedi / New Delhi
16-year old Saurabh Chaudhary shot to glory and gold in the 10m Air Pistol event with a world record score of 245 to secure India’s third Olympic Games quota place in the sport at World Cup Shooting here on Sunday.
There was heart-break for the fans in the Women’s 25m Pistol, as Commonwealth Games champion Manu Bhaker, after shooting a superb 590 in qualification to finish second, ended fifth in the finals, finishing outside the medals and quota places
Meerut-boy Saurabh, who became the youngest Indian gold medallist at the Asian Games last year, now has both the junior and senior world records to his name. He shot the junior record last year at the Changwon world championship and his score there of 245.5 is in fact more than his senior world record score today
The Indian teenager shot 587 to qualify in third place for the final and then displayed awesome form in the eight -men final, ending a huge 5.7 points ahead of Silver winning Serbian Damir Mikec, to sent the home-crowd in raptures.
While Damir secured the second available quota place for his country, former Olympic Champion Pang Wei of China finished third with a score of 215.2.
Saurabh had five scores in the 9s in final , but every-time he would come back with a high 10 to ensure he never let go of the top score, which he had from the very first series of five shots.
“I just tried to keep doing what I usually do. I never thought about the quota or the world record, else I wouldn’t be here,” Chaudhary said after winning Gold.
Two other her Indians competing in the event, Abhishek Verma and Ravinder Singh, failed to qualify for the final as they finished with an identical total of 576 in the qualification round.
This was the second world record shot by an Indian shooter on consecutive days as Apurvi Chandela in the Women’s 10m Air Rifle had done the same on competition day one, en-route to winning Gold in the event.
Chandela and Anjum Moudgil had secured the first two Olympic quotas in shooting in the ISSF World Championships in Korea last yea
The Youth Olympics gold medallist Manu ended the event with a total score of 22.In the first series, Manu scored 3 out of a possible 5.
She found the mark just twice in the second series, slipping to the seventh position. She was on target in the third series jumping to the second spot However, the Haryana shooter struggled to find the target consistently and finished fifth.
She had qualified for the final with a score of 590 while Rahi Sarnobat and Chinki Yadav failed to make the cut. Rahi and Chinki hot 580 each to finish 15t hand 17th respectively.
Veronika Major of Hungary won Gold in the event while China’s Zhang Jingjing won Silver. The quotas also went to Hungary and China.
Earlier in the Men’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions qualification round, veteran Sanjeev Rajput ended 25th with a score of 1169 and Parul Kumar came in 22nd with a score of 1170.
Hungary’s young marksman Istvan Peni won the 50m Rifle 3 Positions event with a finals score of 459.1, overcoming Russian Sergey Kamenskiy by 0.1 points.
Besides Peni, the second quota in the event, however went to Marco Di Nicolo of Italy who won Bronze with a score of 444.5