Chinki Yadav bags India’s 11th Olympic quota in shooting

Doha, November 8

Chinki Yadav secured India’s 11^th Tokyo Olympic quota in shooting with a career-best qualification score of 588 but could not win a medal at the 14^th Asian Championship here on Friday.

The national championship silver and junior world championship bronze-medallist, however, could not replicate her qualification form in the final, only managing a sixth-place finish with a score of 116.

Daughter of an electrician in the Madhya Pradesh government’s sports department in Bhopal, Chinki finished a creditable second in the qualifications of women’s 25m pistol event at the Lusail Shooting Range.

“I cannot explain how happy I am. This has been my best ever performance. I would like to credit my coaches, especially Jaspal sir for this as well as all those who have supported me including everyone in the Bhopal academy and the NRAI,” Chinki said after the event.

The 21-year-old Chinki shot a perfect 100 to finish second in the qualification stage with an aggregate of 588, behind Thailand’s Naphaswan Yangpaiboon (590).

Qualifying for the final was enough for Chinki to book an Olympic quota place for the country as four of the eight finalists had already secured their quotas in earlier competitions. There were four quotas on offer in the ongoing prestigious tournament.

It’s the country’s second quota spot in 25m pistol event after Rahi Sarnobat won the first at the World Cup in Munich earlier this year.

Other Indians in the fray, Annu Raj Singh (575) and Neeraj Kaur (572) finished 21^st and 27^th respectively.

Chinki, who is also interested in painting, has appeared in four ISSF World Cups in her maiden year.

Her best score in the qualifications before this was 584, which she shot in the Rio World Cup earlier this year.

She thanked national coach Jaspal Rana after experiencing one of the best days of her shooting career.

Chinki has been doing active shooting since 2012 but this is her first year with the senior national team.

India have already bagged Olympic quota places in 10m air rifle (men and women), 50m rifle 3 position (men), 10m air pistol (men and women) and 25m air pistol (women).

In other results, the team of Tejaswini Sawant, Anjum Moudgil and Kajal Saini won a gold in women’s 50m Rifle Prone event with a combined score of 1864.8.

In men’s 50m Rifle Prone, the team of Sanjeev Rajput, Shubhankar Pramanick and Tarun Yadav won silver with a combined score of 1865.1  In men’s 25m Standard Pistol event, Udhayveer Sidhu shot 577 to win the individual silver while Udhayveer, Vijayveer Sidhu and Gurpreet Singh won team gold with a total of 1710.

India continued its dominance in the junior and youth categories by picking up 11 more medals on the day, including six more gold. The country has a total medal count of 35 so far in the competition. — PTI