World record holder Saurabh Chaudhary and Manu Bhaker, two of the most promising young Indian shooters, on Friday picked up their second gold medals as India continued domination of the 12th Asian Airgun Championships in Taoyuan, Taipei.
Bhaker won the 10m air pistol women’s event on the third day on Friday, even as Chaudhary won team gold in the men’s event held earlier in the day. Abhishek Verma also won individual silver in the 10m air pistol men, rounding off a fruitful day for himself after the disappointments in the mixed events. The Indian women’s pistol team also won a team bronze to take India’s tally to five gold, three silver, and one bronze medals, with half the competition still left.
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Two days ago, Saurabh Chaudhary and Manu Bhaker had won the 10m air pistol mixed team gold, smashing the qualification world record in the process. The pair shot a combined 784 points in the qualification round, breaking the record set by Russians Vitalina Batsarashkina and Artem Chernousov at the European Championships five years earlier, before going on to win the five-team finals with a score of 484.8.
On Friday, Bhaker shot 575 points 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. Shri Nivetha of India, who had also reached the final, finished sixth.
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In the men’s event, all three Indians made the finals. Chaudhary 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. Chaudhary went down to bronze medallist 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 points, 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.
