Manu Bhaker Continues Golden Run to Win the Commonwealth Games 2018 Women’s 10m Air Pistol Gold
She shot both a qualification record and a Games record in the finals to demolish the opposition
HeenaSidhu wins Silver in the event
Ravi Kumar Wins Men’s 10m Air Rifle Bronze
Saniya Sheikh finished fourth in Women’s Skeet
New Delhi, April 8, 2018: Pistol sensation Manu Bhaker, all of 16, continued her golden run in international shooting, nailing the Women’s 10m Air Pistol Gold on day one of Shooting competitions of the ongoing Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games (GC 2018 CWG). Compatriot and senior HeenaSidhu won Silver while Ravi Kumar in the Men’s 10m Air Rifle won Bronze to give India three Shooting medals on the opening day.
Manu and Heena in-fact finished in the order that they had qualified, as Manu shot 388, a qualification games record to top the qualification charts, a clear 9 points ahead of Heena, who shot 379. Aussie Galiabovitch shot 376 to qualify fifth out of eight final qualifiers while defending champion Shun Xie Tao of Singapore shot 377 to qualify in fourth place.
In the 24-shot final, Manu began where she left off in qualifying, going 1.5 points clear of Galiabovitch after the first 5-shot series itself. She kept getting stronger and posted a wire to wire victory, shooting a Commonwealth Games record score of 240.9, finishing a whopping 6.9 points ahead of the Silver winning Heena.
Heena overcame a slow start in the finals, lying sixth after the first five shots and was almost eliminated in fifth place before coming back strongly to clinch Silver with a finals score of 234. Galiabovitch settled for Bronze, being eliminated after the 22nd shot with a score of 214.9.
In the Men’s 10m Air Rifle, Ravi Kumar survived a shoot-off in the finals to win Bronze with a score of 244.7. He had won Bronze in the event in last month’s International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup in Guadalajara, Mexico, as well. The second Indian in the fray, Deepak Kumar also qualified for the finals but eventually finished sixth.
Australian Dane Sampson, a six-time Oceania champion struck Gold with a Games Record score of 245.0 after 24-shots. Bangladesh’s Baki Abdullah Hel repeated his Glasgow games Silver winning performance in the event, finishing with 244.7, after needing a score in excess of 10.1 to clinch Gold in the final shot.
In the Women’s Skeet, Saniya Sheikh finished fourth, a double miss on the 39th and 40th targets out of a maximum of 60 in the finals, seeing her agonizingly miss out on a Bronze medal by a margin of one. She had earlier shot 71 out of 75 in qualifying to finish second, winning a shoot-off to determine final qualification standings in the process. The other Indian in the field, MaheshwariChauhan, shot 68 to finish eighth.
Gold went to Cyprus’ AndriEleftheriou, a former World Championship Bronze medalist and World Cup and World Cup finals winner. She shot 52 out of 60 to finish ahead of England’s Rio Olympics finalist Amber Hill, who finished with 49. Bronze went to another Cypriot, PanagiotaAndreou who finished with 40, while Saniya shot 32 in the finals.
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