Saurabh guns down gold, silver for Arjun as Indians bag 4 medals

Teenage shooting prodigy Saurabh Chaudhary led a golden sweep, while Manu Bhaker missed out on the medal at the ongoing 11th Asian Airgun Shooting Championship here, on Thursday.

In the 10m Air Pistol men's junior event, Saurabh succeeded into the second stage of the final after scoring 98.2. He went onto clinch the medal round with 24-shot final and logging a total of 220.5.

The silver went to Arjun Singh Cheema who registered 218.8, while Wei-Te Huang of Taiwan settled for bronze. Meanwhile, Anmol Jain settled at fourth position due to unlucky last two shots of 8.6 and 9.4.

Saurabh along with his compatriots Arjun and Anmol shot scores of to win the gold medal in the men's team event 576, 578 and 577 respectively, however, missed the world record by a whisker.

Bhaker, in women's junior event, scored 99 to qualify for the eliminators. She started the medal campaign with a decent 19 and 20.3 but couldn't recover the point gap of her Taiwan counterpart who scored 216.5 and got eliminated with a total of 196.4 at fourth place. But her qualification score propelled India to win the team silver in the women's event.

She along with Abhidnya Ashok Patil and Neha shot scores of 579, 563 and 552 to win the silver. Manu was also the top scorer in the qualification round.

Jaspal Rana, the coach of national team was content with the team's performance and said that it was a fairly successful day. However he said that Manu missing the medal was 'part and parcel' of the game. Now, the total medal tally has gone up to 8 medals.

Earlier, India had clinched four medals - three silver and a bronze opening its campaign at the tournament.