PISTOL ACE JITU RAI RALLIES TO WIN BRONZE IN WORLD CUP
NEW DELHI: One of the medal hopes at next year’s Rio Olympic s, Jitu Rai, came back from a hopeless situation to clinch the men’s air pistol bronze at the ISSF World Cup in Changwon (Korea) on Sunday.
A day after Apurvi Chandela clinched the air rifle bronze — and, with it an Olympic quota place for the country — Jitu aggregated a total of 181.1 points to miss the gold medal shootout by 0.4 points.
The Commonwealth Games and Incheon Asian Games gold-medallist finished behind Jin Jongoh of Korea (gold - 206.0) and Naung Ye Tun of Myanmar (silver - 201.0), who duelled it out in shootout.
Jitu’s amazing run has seen him notch up an amazing seven medals in top international events and it seems he has no issues with ‘peaking’ before major competitions, an excuse many marksmen give for their indifferent performance.
Jitu Rai just about managed to squeeze through into the finals with a 581 in the qualification round. But in the eight-man finals, he built on momentum slowly and finally came into his own around the halfway mark.
The other Indians in the event --- Prakash Nanjappa and Gurpreet Singh --- finished 18th and 48th, respectively after the qualification round.
In 50m rifle prone, Chain Singh made it to the eight-man finals but finished sixth with 123.6 points. He shot 623.4 and qualified in seventh place for the finals. Gagan Narang was placed 13th after a qualification round score of 622.