Shooters Jitu, Prakash, Apurvi misfire; Pooja misses bronze at World Cup

Indian shooters continued to misfire at the ongoing shooting World Cup with Rio-bound Jitu Rai, Prakash Nanjappa and Apurvi Chandela failing to reach the finals of their categories here on Friday.

In men's 50-metre Pistol, Rai could not recover from a first 10 shots score of 89, to miss out on a finals berth by a point. The Commonwealth Games gold medallist recovered in the final 50 shots to shoot 466 out of 500, but his poor start meant that he managed a total of 555 out of 600.

Two of the eight finalists made it with scores of 556. Nanjappa then shot 552 in the same event to finish in 17th position while Omkar Singh was in the 25th place with a score of 549.

In women's 10m Air Rifle event, Apurvi Chandela finished at a disappointing 42nd place after shooting 411.7 points while Pooja Ghatkar narrowly missed out a maiden World Cup bronze and Anjum Moudgil failed to reach the final after shooting 416.4.

Pooja reached the eight-woman final in seventh position with a score of 417.0. Till the 14th shot of the 20 shot final, Pooja looked to be headed towards a first ever World Cup medal, when she was in firm third place, 0.7 points clear of her fourth-placed rival from Korea, Hae Mi Park.

A 9.6 in the 15th shot to Park's 10.0 meant the gap had closed to just 0.3. Park's 16th shot came in at 10.8 to Pooja's 10.3, which meant that she lost out on the bronze by a mere 0.2 points to be eliminated.

China's Bei Du clinched the gold while countrywoman Mengyao Shi took the silver. Park settled for the bronze. Anjum Moudgil of India narrowly missed the final, shooting a score of 416.4 to finish in the ninth place on countback.

The day also witnessed the first precision leg of women's 25m Pistol event, where another Rio hopeful Heena Sidhu registered the highest score of 296 out of 300 while Anisa Sayyed with 283 and Surbhi Pathak with 280 were quite a distance behind. Heena will be shooting the Rapid Fire Stage on Saturday, hoping to make it to the finals.

--IANS

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