 "Manu Bhaker becomes first Indian shooter to reach final at Paris Olympics 2024")
Manu Bhaker stormed into the women’s 10m air pistol final at the Paris Olympics 2024 on Saturday as other Indian shooters fell by the wayside. The 22-year-old shooter from Jhajjar reached the first Olympic final of her career by finishing third in the qualification while in the men’s event, Sarabjot Singh missed out on a spot in the final by a whisker. The 10m mixed air rifle teams also failed to reach the medal matches.
After a poor start in the rifle mixed event and men’s 10m pistol competition, Bhaker became the first Indian shooter in the Paris Olympics 2024 to reach the final with a score of 580 and 27 inner 10 hits. No shooter in the qualification managed so many inner 10 hits.
Paris Olympics 2024 Day 1 LIVE updates
Rhythm Sangwan, however, failed to qualify for the final in the women’s 10m air pistol event after finishing 15th with a score of 573 with 14 inner 10 hits. Only the top eight shooters qualify for the final.
Haungary Veronika Major finished first in Bhaker’s event with a score of 582 and 22 inner 10 hits, while Jin ye Oh of South Korea came second (582 with 20 inner 10 hits).
🇮🇳Update: 10M AIR PISTOL WOMEN'S QUALIFICATION Results 👇🏼
— SAI Media (@Media_SAI) July 27, 2024
- @realmanubhaker finished 3rd with a score of 580
- @SangwanRhythm finished 15th with a total score of 573
Manu Bhaker qualified for the finals, also shooting the highest number of Perfect Scores (27). pic.twitter.com/OyD3tqeOkQ
Impact Shorts
More ShortsBhaker, who is the only Indian shooter to compete in multiple individual events – 10m air pistol and 25m – at Paris Olympics had failed to reach the final of all her three events – women’s 10m air pistol, women’s 25m pistol, and mixed 10m air pistol – at Tokyo Olympics.
Paris Olympics: News, schedule, medals tally and more
She has now become the first Indian female shooter to reach an Olympic final in an individual event in the last 20 years. Suma Shirur was the last Indian to reach the final of the 10m Air Rifle event in Athens 2004.
The women’s 10m air pistol final will take place on Sunday (28 July) at 3.30 PM IST.
Heartbreak for Sarabjot
In the men’s 10m air pistol qualification, Sarabjot finished ninth after hitting just one lesser inner 10s than Germany’s Robin Walter who finished eighth. Arjun Cheema from India failed to qualify after finishing 18th.
Sarabjot ended the qualification tied on 577 points with Walter but the German qualified for the final, having hit 17 inner 10s as compared to the Indian shooter’s 16.
Cheema scored 574 with 17 inner 10s.
“I did very well from my end. It was a bad day. Unable to understand how I missed out on the final,” Sarabjot told JioCinema. Got to learn a lot today.
“I realised that there are some gaps in my technique. I will go back and try to improve it.
“I didn’t feel the Olympics pressure. Tried my best but bad luck.”
Poor start in shooting
Earlier, the Indian 10m air rifle mixed teams of Ramita Jindal-Arjun Babuta and Elavenil Valarivan-Sandeep Singh failed to reach the medal round on Day 1 of the Paris Olympics 2024. In the qualification event that took place in Chateauroux which is over 250km away from Paris, the Ramita-Arjun pair finished sixth with an overall score of 628.7 while Elavenil-Sandeep was 12th with a score of 626.3.
Only the top four teams from the qualification round take part in the medal round.
The top two teams take part in a gold/silver medal match, while the bronze medal match will be composed of the next two teams.
China’s Yuting Huang-Lihao Sheng topped the qualification with a 632.2 score, followed by Jihyeon Keum-Hajun Park of South Korea scoring 631.4.
Kazakhstan’s Alexandra Le-Islam Satpayev was third with a score of 630.8 and Germany’s Anna Janssen-Maximilian Ulbrich (629.7) was fourth.
Yuting Huang-Lihao Sheng went on to win the first gold medal of the Paris Olympics while South Korea won silver and Kazakhstan clinched bronze.
This was India’s only chance of winning a medal on Day 1 of the Paris Games. At Tokyo 2020, India won their first medal on Day 1 with Mirabai Chanu clinching silver in weightlifting.
The are no more medals on offer for India on Saturday.
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