The gold continued to elude Indian shooters as the women's air pistol team fell one point short of the top score in the Asian Games here on Sunday.
On a day when Vijay Kumar came up with a surprise bronze medal, with the best performance among the eight finalists after being eighth at the end of qualification series in men's air pistol that is not his main event, the trio of Heena Sidhu, Annuraj Singh and Sonia Rai lost the gold to Korea but hung on to the silver, a point ahead of China.
After Gagan Narang, Abhinav Bindra and Sanjeev Rajput had missed the air rifle gold by one point earlier to China, it was the second expensive slip from the Indian shooting squad.
Yet, it was a courageous fare from Heena Sidhu. She overcame two bad shots to return a score of 381. The student of dentistry from Patiala, Heena had rounds of 94, 98, 93 and 96. She had an ‘8' on the second shot, and a ‘7' in the third series. Eventually, she missed the final, in the shoot-off with two others for one slot.
“I am happy that I was able to do so well despite the two bad shots. It actually adds to my confidence. I don't remember the bad shots, but the good ones.
Changed technique
“I have recently changed technique, and am still working on it. I am happy that the team got the silver,” said Heena, who had won the team gold and the individual silver in the Commonwealth Games.
The Indian women had won the silver medal in the last edition in Doha also, and Sonia Rai was the common factor in the two teams. She had partnered Shweta Chaudhary and Harveen Srao last time.
In fact, Sonia, who profusely thanked her skeet shooter husband Amardeep Singh Rai and her guru Narayan Singh Rana (Jaspal Rana's father) for her achievements, had to ward off a stiff challenge from Shweta this time in the selection trials to make the team.
“All three of us have done very well to shoot an average of 380. It hurts to miss the gold, particularly so, as I had a ‘9' on the last shot. It happens in sport. We are actually getting close to the gold,” said Sonia.
While Sonia had steady rounds of 95, 95, 95 and 94 for 379, Annuraj Singh recovered from a bad start to have a series of 91, 95, 97 and 97 for a total of 380.
The brilliance of Yunmi Gim not only fetched the gold for her ahead of Sun Qi of China, but also took the Korean team to the gold as her partners shot 379 each.
Meanwhile, when triple gold medallist in the Commonwealth Games, Omkar Singh disappointed with a below par fare, another triple gold medallist Vijay Kumar shocked a strong field of Chinese and the Koreans to bag the bronze.
In fact, Vijay Kumar who is a rapid fire pistol shooter, was gunning for a big score before spoiling his book with a 93 on the last card, in the preliminary phase. He was in the lead at one stage following rounds of 97, 98, 98, 96, 97.
Impressive series
In the final, Vijay Kumar came up with an impressive series that fetched him a total of 101.4, that was 0.6 point better than the eventual gold medallist Daemyung Lee of Korea, who had shot 585 in the qualification and beat defending champion Tan Zongliang of China.
While Vijay Kumar had to rush back to the 25-metre range to train for the rapid fire pistol competition on Monday, national coach Prof. Sunny Thomas, recalled how the quiet performer was a reluctant member of the air pistol team.
“There is no connection between rapid fire pistol and air pistol. One is quick fire and the other is slow. Since it is all done in a hurry in 8 seconds, 6 seconds and 4 seconds in rapid fire, Vijay has actually been using air pistol to train himself for proper aiming etc.
“It is cheap also to shoot air pistol. He was going great guns and could have done better, but for dropping five points in four shots with 8, 9, 9, 9 towards the end. I knew that he could make up for a difference of two points, as it was air pistol and not air rifle,” said Prof. Thomas.
Jongoh Jin of Korea, who had shot 581 in qualification, finished sixth, as he could muster only 97.7 in the final.
The Indian team missed the bronze by four points to Japan.
“Omkar Singh tried everything but could not arrest the bad shots. He does not score below 580 generally,” said Prof. Thomas. Omkar shot 568, and had two bad cards of 92 and 93 on the second and sixth respectively, that blew away a team medal.
