Gagan Narang shows he’s the boss

Indian shooters Gagan Narang, Anisa Sayyed and Omkar Singh dominated the individual events adding 3 more gold medals to India’s tally at the Karni Singh Shooting Range here on Wednesday.

Gagan took the limelight away from his opponents, including Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra, in the 10m air rifle individual event. He scored a perfect 600 in the qualifying round and then shot 103.6 to better his own world record (703.5 points) totalling 703.6 points in the final. Bindra, who shot 698 (595 + 103) had to satisfy with a silver in the only event he was participating in the Games. England’s James Huckle won the bronze with 693.5 points (591 + 102.5).

“Yesterday I had scored 598, which was good, but today when I started, I was expecting to keep things simple, but they were not that simple. But as I started shooting, things fell in place,” said Gagan after the match.

In the pistol events, Anisa Sayyed and Rahi Sarnobat continued their good run
in the championship by winning the gold and silver respectively in women’s 25m pistol event. Anisa scored 786.8 to grab the top spot and in the process created a new Games record by breaking Australia’s Lalita Yauhleuskaya’s record (781.5), which was created in the Melbourne Games in 2006. For the second spot, Rahi, who was trailing by four points behind Pei Chin Bibiana Ng of Malaysia in the qualifying round, improvised in the final round and covered up the points to finish with silver, scoring 781 points.

Similarly in the men’s 50m pistol event, Omkar Singh, who was second in the qualification round, shot 653.6 (557 + 96.6) to overtake Singapore’s Bin Gai (649.6, 558 + 91.6) to clinch the third gold from the sport. “I was one point behind from Bin Gai in the qualification round, but I knew that one-point difference is not a big margin in 50m event. A lot of ups and downs happen in the final round, so I focussed on my performance rather than think over the difference. I am happy to win a gold with my personal best score,” Omkar told DNA.

In the men’s double trap pairs event, Ronjan Singh Sodhi and Asher Noria missed the gold by just one point to England’s duo of Stevan Walton and Steven Scott. The English shooters scored 189, while the Indian duo scored 188 to finish second. “I know it is bad to miss the gold by just one point, but we shot well and I think the English shooters also did a great job,” said Asher.