Incheon: Indian men settled for a bronze medal after narrowly missing the silver in the 10m air pistol event at the Ongnyeon shooting range, continuing their good run in the 17th Asian Games, here on Sunday.
India's latest shooting star Jitu Rai entered the eight-man final as the second best qualifier but could not stand on the podium after finishing fifth, a day after clinching the 50m gold.
Rai's precise shooting, that helped him garner 585 points and qualify with a point behind Kazakhstan's Rashid Yunusmetov, backed up by Samaresh Jung's 580 (who finished 9th) and Prakash Nanjappa's 578 (14th), albeit with an injured leg, helped India garner 1743 points, the same as second placed China, for the bronze.
India and China were level on points and the silver was decided by the number of Xs (bullseye) in the tens in which the latter tallied one more - 65 to India's 64. The gold was won by hosts South Korea with a combined tally of 1744, leading Samaresh to later say that "why only silver, we narrowly missed the gold too".
Rai had provided India with their first gold in these Games on day one of competitions on Saturday. Rai's sequence of hits at the target were 97, 99, 95, 98, 97 and 99 and he even expressed his disappointment despite scoring tens at times. Burly Samaresh, the 2006 Commonwealth Games 'Gold Finger', came up with 97, 97, 97, 96, 96 and 98 to finish one slot outside the finals qualification.
He later said, "I am pretty happy to finish with a medal and not exactly disappointed (at not making the finals)." "Why only silver, we missed out on the gold too by one point. But that's how it goes," he said.
Like all other shooting contingent members, he too had to return to India after the World Championships in Spain to get Korean visas in the absence of their accreditations with them but, unlike a few of the rest, said he was quite happy to spend a day at home after spending several days overseas.
Asked about his immediate future, he said, "I am not even looking at the Rio qualifications now. If I get a quota I will go and shoot there. It's two years away. I will be taking part in the nationals."
Nanjappa, a CWG gold medal winner, was hampered by a leg injury which he had sustained just before the Granada worlds while running on the road as part of the physical fitness training process in Hanover, Germany. "I shot in the world championships with this ligament strain on my left leg. I did so again today after removing the cast and took some time to shoot well," he said.
Nanjappa said another problem he faced, like fellow shooter Shweta Chaudhry, was that he could not use his new weapon, a different brand of Italian make to the one he had been using in the past, during yesterday's practice as "it had been held up at the Korean Customs and got released only late yesterday".
"We provide our federation with the details of the weapon we are using and the federation forwards the information to the Indian Olympic Association. For my part I had informed the federation well in advance."
"The weapon, if it's new, has a different feel to it. I used it at the World Championships," he added.
Saying he was disappointed at not making the finals, Nanjappa said the team could have won the silver if not gold. "We should have done better. I took time to settle down.
I had not done any physical fitness routine like running for several days because of my doctor's advice following the leg injury," he pointed out.
Having completed his campaign here, he has set his immediate future sights on the upcoming nationals in Delhi and the National Games next year in Kerala.
"These two and one more qualification tournament would decide the teams for the World Cups to get our quota places for the Rio Olympics," he said.
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