Tokyo Olympics 2020: Angad Bajwa, Manu Bhaker fail to qualify for finals

Six Indian shooters participated in different shooting events on Sunday.

Angad Vir Singh Bajwa missed two targets out of 75, to be placed 11thon count back in Men’s Skeet and with a top-six finals spot well in sight at the end of day three of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Shooting competition.

Competing at the Asaka Shooting range on Sunday, Angad had scores of 25,24,24 in the first three series and will come back on Monday to shoot the final two series in qualifying. 

Compatriot Mairaj Ahmad Khan shot 71 to be in placed 25thout of the 30 shooters in fray.

Men’s Skeet is the only event with Indian interest in shooting on Monday and the finals are scheduled for 12.20 PM IST.

Manu Bhaker suffers equipment malfunction to narrowly miss final

India’s Manu Bhaker suffered an unfortunate equipment malfunction during the qualifying round of the Women’s 10M Air Pistol event earlier on Sunday, making her lose crucial time, but despite that fought back gallantly to miss the final by two points.

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A score of 8 for the final shot when she was completely out of time, meant that she finished with a score of 575 to finish 12thin the final standings. The eighth and final qualifying spot went at 577 and an inner ring 10 would have made her qualify.

Elaborating on the incident, Pistol coach Ronak Pandit said, “The cocking lever of the weapon broke after 16 shots. We had to get it changed. She had 44 shots remaining in 56mins and then when we started it was 44 shots in 38mins. To change the lever, the grip and the trigger circuit has to be removed.

They were put back but then the circuit would not work so we had to change that again. She was placed fourth when all this happened and by the time she resumed, others were in their fourth series while she was still on her second. No extra time is allowed according to the rules and the pressure at the end was too much. We are proud of the way she shot today.”

ALSO READ: Heena Sidhu defends Manu Bhaker after equipment breakdown

Yashaswini Deswal also fought hard in the same event, but she too dropped four crucial points in the last five shots including an 8 for the 59thshot, to finish a point as well as a spot behind Manu.

Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) athlete Vitalina Batsarashkina won gold, improving upon the colour she won at Rio with a new Olympic record score of 240.3 at the end of the 24-shot final. Antoaneta Kostadinova of Bulgaria won silver while China’s Jiang Ranxin won bronze.

Air Rifle Men miss out by quite a bit

The two Indian competitors in the Men’s 10M Air Rifle, Deepak Kumar and Divyansh Singh Panwar also could not make much headway, finishing 26thand 32ndin qualifying respectively. Deepak shot a score of 624.7 while Divyansh was further back with 622.8. Both had a weak first series if 10-shots where they scored 102.9 and 102.7 respectively and never recovered.

The USA’s William Shaner, who had won the World Cup in New Delhi earlier this year, won gold with yet another Olympic record score of 251.6. The two Chinese, Sheng Lihao and Yang Haoran followed for silver and bronze.

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