Indian shooters continue to falter at Olympic qualifier

Indian shooter Sania Sheikh missed out on an olympic quota after finishing fourth in women's skeet at the Asian qualifiers being held at the Karni Singh Shooting Range here on Monday.

Sania was the best Indian performer on the sixth day of the competition. It was another day of near misses for India where two other shooters -- Omkar Singh in the men's 10m Air Pistol and Arti Singh Rao in women's skeet -- made it to their respective finals but failed to win a quota or a medal.

Sania lost out to South Korea's Kim Minji 14-11 in the bronze medal match. The only available Olympic quota in the event was won by Japan's Naoko Ishihara who defeated Thailand's Nutchaya Sutarporn 13-9 to the gold.

In the men's 10m Air Pistol finals, Omkar qualified for the final in fifth place with a score of 577. Three of the eight shooters in the final could not claim quotas as either their country had exhausted their maximum limit of two quotas per event or the athletes themselves had won Olympic quotas for their countries in earlier competitions.

Omkar started off well with a score of 10.3 in the 20 shot final, but flattered to deceive after being in quota contention for a while. A disappointing 7.9 in the eighth shot meant that he got eliminated in the seventh position after the 10th shot. The two available quotas in the event went to the gold medallist from Malaysia Guanjie Wong and silver medallist from Saudi Arabia Atallah Alanazi. Kim Jong Su of North Korea took the bronze.

There are seven quota places still up for grabs on the concluding day of the competition on Tuesday which will see the finals of the men's Skeet and men's 50m Rifle 3 Positions event. Sanjeev Rajput in Rifle and Man Singh in Skeet will spearhead the Indian challenge for Olympic quota places.