Manu Bhaker, Saurabh Chaudhary clinch gold at Asian Airgun C'ship

Young pistol shooters Manu Bhaker and Saurabh Chaudhary picked up their second gold medals each as India continued their domination at the 12th Asian Airgun Championships in Taoyuan, Taipei on Friday.

Manu won the 10m Air Pistol women's event on day three of competitions, while Saurabh bagged a team gold in the men's event.

Abhishek Verma also won individual silver in the men's 10m Air Pistol, rounding off a profitable day for himself after the disappointments in the mixed events.

The women's pistol team also won a bronze to further bolster India's tally to five gold, three silver and one bronze medal with half the competition still to go.

Manu shot 575 out of 600 to qualify in second place and then was involved in a pitched battle with Shing Ho Ching of Hong Kong for most parts of the 24-shot final, before finishing stronger in the end stages. She shot a score of 239 to Shing's 237.9 while UAE's Wafa Alali settled for bronze.

Shri Nivetha of India, who had also reached the final, finished sixth.

In the men's event, all three Indians made the finals. Saurabh topped with 587, while Ravinder was fourth to qualify with 578. Abhishek, in fact, was the lowest ranked Indian among the eight qualifiers, fifth with 577, but was the only one to land a medal.

Abhishek shot 240.7 and lost out to Korea's Mose Kim by 0.2 to settle for silver. Saurabh went down to bronze medalist Taehwan Lee of Korea in a shoot-off to finish fourth on 198.8 while Ravinder was seventh with 136.3.

The trio though picked up the team gold over the Koreans with a total of 1742, a clear 12 points ahead.