Chateauroux: Three Indian shooters fought hard on day nine of the Paris Olympics shooting competition at the French National Shooting Centre range in, but could not make the finals cut after staying in contention till the final stages of their qualification round.
Maheshwari Chauhan in the Skeet Women’s event shot a 25 in round four early on Sunday morning to go into the final round in fifth position, but a 22 in round five meant she tallied 118 to finish in 14th spot overall. The sixth and final qualification spot went at 120.
Then Vijayveer Sidhu and Anish Bhanwala shot brilliantly over two stages of qualification in the 25m Rapid-Fire Pistol Men’s event, staying in contention till the final 10-shots of the second rapid-fire stage, only to shoot scores of 92 and 93 to finish ninth and 13th respectively. Here too the top six make the final cut.
Both shooters shot scores of 293 in the first precision stage to go into the rapid-fire round in fifth and seventh positions. Vijayveer then shot a 100 and 98 in the first two rapid-fire series to move up to second at one stage as Anish also shot 99 and 97 to stay in touch with the top six. The final round changed all of that.
Raiza Dhillon, the second Indian in the field also in her first Olympics as the above three, shot 113 over five rounds for a 23rd place finish. India still has one more start in the Shotgun events when Maheshwari comes back with Anant Jeet Singh Naruka for the Mixed Team Skeet, an event which will also be making an Olympic debut.
The shooting contingent has so far won three bronze medals at the Paris Games.
(IANS)
