Four medals for Indian shooters on final day

New Delhi, December 11 

Saurabh Chaudhary and Manu Bhaker booked quota places for the 2018 Youth Olympic Games by winning a gold and a silver medal respectively at the 10th Asian Airgun Championship at Wako City, Japan, today.

Chaudhary won both individual as well as the team gold in the men’s 10m Air Pistol Youth event, while Manu clinched a silver in the women’s 10m Air Pistol Youth.

India claimed another silver in the junior women’s 10m Air Pistol.

In all, India added four medals to their kitty on the final day of the competition to finish with a haul of 21 medals, including six gold, eight silver and seven bronze, besides four Youth Olympics quotas.

The day began with the junior women’s 10m Air Pistol event, where two Indians — junior world champion Yashaswini Singh Deswal and Mahima Agrawal — made it to the final. 

Both Yashaswini and Mahima shot 378 to take third and fourth place respectively in the qualifiers. Another Indian in the fray, Yogita shot 372 to finish in 11th place.

Their combined score of 1128 helped India claim a team silver, behind Iran (1144) and ahead of Korea, who logged a total of 1122.

In the final, Yashaswini shot 195.7 to finish fourth, while Mahima ended sixth at 155.4. 

Yan Chen of China won the gold, hitting a world and Asian record of 240.1 — beating 235.9 shot by Veronika Major and Yashaswini.

In the men’s 10m Air Pistol Youth final, Arjun Singh Cheema topped the qualifying round with a score of 577, while Chaudhary shot 573 to claim third spot. Surinder Singh, the third Indian in the field, shot 561 to finish 10th.

The trio won the team gold with a combined effort of 1711, 11 points clear of the silver winning Korean team and 19 ahead of China, who won bronze.

Chaudhary then came up with a start to finish effort in the final to score 243.1 and win gold. In the process he also sealed the first of the three available quota places for the Youth Olympics to be held in Argentina next year.

Chaudhary finished almost seven points ahead of Iran’s Erfan Salavati, who won silver with 236.2. Okcheo Shin of Korea bagged a bronze with 217.6.

Arjun managed sixth place at 156.8.

In the women’s 10m Air Pistol Youth, Manu topped the qualifying round with a score of 382 and was the only Indian to reach the final.

Priya Raghav occupied the 16th place with a score of 368, while Anushka Patil shot 365 to finish a distant 22nd.

Manu had a horrid start to the final, lying eighth after 10 shots. However, she recovered wonderfully to win the silver, losing to China’s Jiaruixuan Xiao by a margin of 0.1. Final scores read 236.1 to Xiao and 236.0 to Manu. — PTI