Harpal Singh Bedi / New Delhi
Continuing with their winning ways, pistol shooters Manu Bhaker and Saurabh Chaudhary won their second gold medals each enabling India to continue their domination of the 12thAsian Airgun Championships, in Taoyuan, Taipei.
According to information received here, Manu Bhaker won the 10m Air Pistol Women’s event on Friday, even as Saurabh Chaudhary won a Team gold in the Men’s event held earlier.
Abhishek Verma also bagged a individual silver in the 10m Air Pistol Men, rounding off a profitable day for himself after the disappointments in the mixed events.
The women’s pistol team also finished with a Team Bronze to further bolster medal tally to five gold, three silver and one bronze medal with half the competition still to go.
Manu shot 575 out of 600 to qualify in second place and then was involved in a pitched battle with Shing Ho Ching of Hong Kong for most parts of the 24-shot final, before finishing stronger in the end stages. She shot a score of 239 to Shing’s 237.9 while UAE’s Wafa Alali came in third.
In the Men’s event all three Indians made the finals. Saurabh topped with 587, while Ravinder was fourth to qualify with 578. Abhishek in fact was the least ranked Indian among the eight qualifiers, fifth with 577, but was the only one to land a medal.
He shot 240.7 and lost out to Korea’s Mose Kim by 0.2 to settle for silver. Saurabh went down to bronze medalist Taehwan Lee of Korea in a shoot-off to finish fourth on 198.8. Ravinder was seventh with 136.3.
The trio though picked up the Team Gold over the Koreans with a total of 1742, a clear 12 points ahead.
With five medals in the kitty now, India will look forward to day three of the championships which has the Men’s and Women’s 10m Air Pistol events lined up.