Road to Rio: Shooter Kynan Chenai secures Olympics 2016 berth for India

New Delhi: Youngster Kynan Chenai registered the best day of his short Trap shooting career, when he beat all odds to finish fourth and as a result secured one of the four available quotas for India in the Men’s Trap event on day two of the Asia Olympic Shooting qualifiers on Thursday. Chenai qualified for the quality six-man final field shooting a score of 120 (47/50 on Wednesday and 73/75 on Thursday) at the Karni Singh Shooting Range in Delhi. In the final round, Kynan tied with three others after the first 15 shots with a score of 12 to reach the semi-finals, thereby assuring his country of her 10th Rio Olympics quota in shooting. [caption id=“attachment_2603072” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Kynan Chenai. Image Credit: Facebook/Olympic Gold Quest[/caption] He then had to settle for a bronze medal match-up with Kuwait’s (now shooting as an International Shooting participant) Talal Al-Rashidi. Talal eventually piped him for the bronze medal having missed just one of his 15 shots while Kynan missed two. Another International shooting participant Abdulrahman Al Faihan won the gold medal in the event and Chinese Taipei’s Yang Kun-Pi won the silver medal. The other three quotas in the event went to Kuwait, Chinese Taipei and Kazakhstan respectively. In Men’s 25M Rapid Fire Pistol event, India’s Olympic Silver medallist Vijay Kumar saw his dreams of securing a quota for Rio fade away after having qualified for the final with a top score of 576 in qualifying. In the six-man final where he had to beat Qatari Oleg Engachev and one out of two Japanese shooters to ensure a quota, Vijay became the second shooter to be eliminated, finishing fifth as a result. The two quotas in the event were bagged by eventual gold medallist Teruyoshi Akiyama and bronze medalist Eita Mori of Japan. Korea’s Yong Hoo Choi clinched the silver. South Korea could not claim quotas in this event as they had already exhausted them in earlier competitions. IANS