Saurabh settles for 10m pistol silver

Doha, November 11 

Saurabh Chaudhary claimed the silver medal in the men’s 10m air pistol event to continue India’s surge at the 14th Asian Shooting Championship here today.

The 17-year-old World Cup and Asian Games gold medallist shot 244.5 to finish second behind North Korea’s Kim Song Guk, who won the top prize with a world record 246.5. Iran’s Foroughi Javed bagged the bronze with a score of 221.8.

With 583, Abhishek Verma and Chaudhary had qualified for the final in sixth and seventh places, respectively. However, Verma had to be satisfied with a fifth-place finish, having managed 181.5. 

The trio of Chaudhary, Verma and Sharvan Kumar bagged the team bronze with a total of 1740, finishing behind China (1745) and South Korea (1744).

The air pistol quotas from this competition went to Iran, North Korea and Pakistan as India and China had already secured two (maximum) quotas each. Chaudhary and Verma secured their Olympics quotas in earlier competitions.

Shreya Agrawal and Dhanush Srikanth won the gold medal in the junior 10m air rifle mixed team competition. They beat their Chinese opponents 16-14 in the gold-medal match.

Gurnihal Garcha, Abhay Singh Sekhon and Ayush Rudraraju claimed the team gold in the junior men’s skeet. Garcha also won an individual silver with a score of 50 in the finals. Sekhon, who had topped qualification, finished fourth. In all, India picked up eight medals on the day. — PTI