Gagan Narang finishes seventh in 50m Rifle Prone event, reaches second World Cup final in four days

Baku (Azerbaijan): London Olympics Bronze medallist shooter Gagan Narang finished seventh in the men’s 50m Rifle Prone event on day five of the sixth and final ISSF World Cup in Baku on Sunday. [caption id=“attachment_2422472” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File picture of Gagan Narang. AFP[/caption] Gagan reached his second World Cup final in four days and fifth final in the event in the last two years, from which he has collected one medal – a bronze he won in Fort Benning in 2015. His score of 621.1 in the qualifying round, which enabled Gagan to become the seventh place shooter out of eight to make it to the finals, was below his best but enough to get him another world cup final match-up before Rio Olympics. The highest score registered in qualifying was 624.7. Gagan started the finals on a positive note, shooting into the second place after the first series of three shots. He was in fourth place till the eighth shot but a 9.9 in his ninth shot meant despite a 10.4 in the 10th, Gagan had to bow out in seventh position. The gold in the event went to Denmark’s Torben Grimmel, who picked up his third World Cup gold of the year in the event. Kenneth Parr of Germany won the silver and Petar Gorsa of Croatia took the bronze. Sanjeev Rajput, the second Indian in the men’s 50m Prone, finished 14th with an overall qualifying score of 617.6. In the day’s other medal event, India’s Gurpreet Singh shot a score of 569 in the qualifying round of the men’s 25m Rapid Fire Pistol to end in 26th spot. Indian shooters have reached six finals in the Baku World Cup, with Jitu Rai giving India its only medal so far in the men’s 10m Air Pistol yesterday. There are two more competition days left in the tournament with four sets of medals yet to be decided in them.