Ramita Jindal (Haryana) turned on a world class display in the women’s 10m Air Rifle qualification competition in the 38th National Games at the spanking new Trishul Shooting Range in Dehradun on Wednesday.
She topped the charts in the Air Rifle event, her score of 634.9 bettering the 634.5 by Korea’s Ban Hyojin in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Mehuli Ghosh had shot 634.5 to lead the qualification in the 2023 World Championships in Baku.
Jindal led the eight qualifiers for the women’s Air Rifle final. Her score of gave her a 0.4-point margin over Arya Borse (Maharashtra).
Tamil Nadu’s Narmada Raju was only 0.1 points behind and in third place. Kerala’s Vidarsa K Vinod, who was leading the charts at one stage, was fourth with 633.0 points.
The last berth in the Olympic final was secured at 631.3.
Shreya Agarwal (Madhya Pradesh), 632.0, Elavenil Valarivan (Gujarat) 631.9, Meghana Sajjanar (Karnataka) 631.2 and Manyata Singh (Odisha) 630.1 completed the set of eight finalists who will do battle on Thursday.
It promises to be a riveting contest that will test the nerves of each of the shooters.
The 587 that Vijayveer Singh Sidhu (Punjab) shot in the Rapid Fire Pistol on Wednesday would have given him a place in the Olympic final if he had got it in Paris where he shot 583. Anish Bhanwala (Haryana) 582, Neeraj Kumar (Services) 579, Bhavesh Shekhawat (Rajasthan) 577, Omkar Singh (Services) and Gurpreet Singh (Services) 574 each completed the finalists.
London 2012 Olympic Games silver medalist Vijay Kumar (Himachal Pradesh) was in the running for a place in the final, but a sub-par final series put paid to his aspirations.
Had he shot 94 instead of 90 in the four-second series in the second stage of qualification, the veteran may have forced a shoot-off for the sixth place.
Leave a Reply