Manu leads India’ s gold charge
BULLSEYE Bhaker becomes India’s youngest winner in sport at 16; Heena doubles joy with silver in 10m air pistol
GOLDCOAST: Manu Bhaker is turning out to be the golden girl of Indian shooting. After bagging multiple medals in the ISSF World Cup in Mexico and the Junior World Cup in Sydney, the 16-year-old from Jhajjar, Haryana opened India’s account at the Commonwealth Games shooting competition on Sunday with a brilliant performance that belied her age.
Manu won gold in women’s 10m air pistol, the first event in shooting at Gold Coast, becoming the youngest winner for India in the sport. To add to her achievement, she set a Commonwealth Games record in the qualifying round.
Though the Asian Games and Olympics will be bigger tests, the fact that Manu won the gold with a Games record proves that she is capable of crossing those hurdles too.
The icing on the cake for India was seasoned Heena Sidhu fighting back from sixth spot in the final to win silver and completing a grand double for the country that is expected to dominate shooting at these Games.
Sidhu’s index finger (the trig- ger finger) had been troubling her for some time, thus affecting her rhythm and hampering her preparations for the Commonwealth Games.
“Although I don’t know if you could call it an injury, because I did not get hurt, but slowly last year my index finger, the trigger finger, began trembling. I did a lot of MRIS and physiotherapy, so we understood there was some nerve involvement and we worked on it. For the past month or so,
I’ve been having a tingling sensation. It flared up a lot in the last week so I had my physiotherapists come in,” Heena explained.
India had some more good news on the opening day of the competition at Belmont Shooting Centre as Ravi Kumar won bronze medal in men’s 10m air rifle competition finishing behind Australia’s Dane Sampson and Abdullah Hel Baki of Bangladesh. However, India could not bag a double in men’s 10m air rifle competition despite Deepak Kumar and Ravi Kumar qualifying in first and second position. Deepak, who set the Games record by scoring 627 in qualifying round, faltered in the final and eventually finished sixth.
In skeet, Saniya Sheikh finished fourth after shooting 32 in the final.
Earlier, in women’s 10m air pistol, Manu made a perfect start as she led from the start, topping the qualifying round and never letting her concentration and confidence flag during the final. Manu shot 388 in qualifying round, hitting 10 perfect shots to set a Games record.
In the final, Manu hit a perfect 10.9 on her 20th shot while she had 10.8 in her 13th shot as she finished with a score of 240.9. In all, she shot 10 or more on 14 shots.
While Manu was going strong, Heena slipped to sixth spot after a couple of 9.2s and a 9.0 in the first 10 shots before recovering to take silver.