Shooters blank on second day
Tokyo, July 25: The fancied Indian shooting team drew a blank for the second day running in the Tokyo Olympics here, with a major weapon malfunction leading to a heartbreaking exit for the young Manu Bhaker in the women’s
10m air pistol event. Appearing in her maiden Olympics, the 19-year-old Manu finished a creditable
12th, despite losing nearly
20 minutes during the qualifications after the cocking lever in her pistol broke down, forcing her to go to a designated area for getting it fixed.
Manu shot 575, while the cut-off was 577.
Yashaswini Singh Deswal, the other firsttimer at the Games, recovered from a subdued start to end 13th, with a total score of 574.
In the men’s 10 air rifle event, both the experienced Deepak Kumar and the teenaged Divyansh Singh Panwar finished a lowly 26th and 32nd respectively.
Deepak aggregated 624.7 while Divyansh shot 622.8 over the six series, scores which were never going to be enough to make the final.
Taken together, the first two days’ performance, or, the lack of it, is certainly going to raise a few eyebrows within the Indian shooting fraternity, including the National Rifle Association of India
(NRAI), which has done its bit in preparing its athletes.
While the pistol shooters, especially the young Saurabh Chaudhary and Manu, put up a strong fight in their maiden appearances on a stage as grand as the Olympics, the scores registered by the ones in rifle events left a lot to be desired.
According to an insider in the NRAI, the federation is certainly feeling let down with the scores of rifle shooters Deepak, Divyansh, Apurvi Chandela and Elavenil Valarivan in the women’s 10m qualifications on Saturday.
He added that it’s still early days as 12 starts remain for the Indian shooters in Tokyo. —