Saurabh’s gold caps shooters’ best returns at Games
pack.
This despite an equally impressive series of 10.0, 10.7, 10.2 and 10.1 by Switzerland’s Solari Jason.
An 8.5 saw the Swiss being pipped by Korea’s Sung Yunho, even as the Indian continued to produce excellent scores.
Saurabh had two slow starts in the day, the first in qualifying when he was briefly placed 11th in the 20-man field before stamping his class with a solid 580 over 60 shots to top the standings.
Then he began slowly in the finals, but then literally decimated the field, opening up leads of 0.8 after five shots, 2.9 after 10 shots, a full five points after the 18th shot and eventually finished with 244.2, a full 7.5 points clear of silver winning Korean Sung Yunho, who finished with 236.7.
This was India’s fourth podium from shooting in four days, as the four individual shooters at the Games — Shahu Mane, Mehuli Ghosh, Manu Bhaker and Chaudhary — won two gold and two silver medals between them.
Chaudhary topped the qualifying with 580 ahead of Iran’s Salavati Erfan and Czech Republic’s Schejbal Pavel. The India’s sequence of scores included 97, 96, 95, 100, 95, 97.
The teen sensation entered the event on the back of a blazing run. The Asiad gold medallist created a new junior world record to clinch the air pistol junior men gold in the 52nd ISSF Shooting World Championship in Changwon last month.