Chateauroux (France): The Indian shooting duo of Maheshwari Chauhan and Anant Jeet Singh Naruka fought tooth and nail before missing out on a bronze medal by a whisker in the skeet mixed team event, finishing fourth at the Paris Olympics here Monday.
Maheshwari and Naruka shot 43 to finish fourth behind China’s Yiting Jiang and Jianlin Lyu (44) in a thrilling match for the bronze medal.
Earlier, the Indians finished fourth in the qualification after both teams were tied on 146 at the end of the three-round, 150-shot process, forcing a shoot-off.
In the qualification, Maheshwari shone with 50/50 in her final two rounds while Naruka notched scores of 25, 23 and 24 in the three rounds.
What swung the match in China’s favour was the incredible form of Lyu who did not miss a single shot on way to the podium, even as his partner Jiang recovered after a rare three straight misses to help the pair to victory.
At the start of the medal round, China’s Lyu and Jiang earned perfect scores of 4/4 against India.
In reply, India’s Naruka missed out on one of the four targets (3/4) in the first station. Chauhan shot a score of 4/4 to get off to a good start.
Trailing China (8/8) after the first station, India (7/8) fought back in station two and restored parity heading into the third station. What helped the Indians at this stage was the three successive misses by Jiang.
Even as Lyu continued with his flawless shooting, Jiang missed one but then got his act together to finish on a strong note.
In order to win a bronze, India were left with the task to hit all eight targets while hoping that China would miss a few.
Naruka and Chauhan fired all four targets in the decider, but Lyu and Jiang kept their nerves and succeeded in all their attempts to edge out the Indians by just one point.
Earlier, the Indian pair was placed tied second with a score of 49 after the first stage in the qualification, sharing the position with Australia, Korea, France and two Italian teams.
Naruka scored 25/25 in the first round the qualification while Maheshwari shot 24/25 to take India’s total to 49.
In the second round, it was Maheshwari’s turn to shoot a perfect 25 but Naruka missed two shots each in the 2nd and 5th series to tally 23, which gave them an aggregate score of 48.
In the third round, India got 49 with 25 for Maheshwari and 24 for Naruka.
China finished a place above India after prevailing in the shoot-off to decide the third and fourth place. Both were tied on a score of 146.
Italy’s Gabriele Rossetti and Diana Bacosi shot 149/150 to equal the world record in qualification. They were joined by American Vincent Hancock and Austen Jewell Smith (148) in the gold medal match.
The result notwithstanding, India will return from the games with the biggest-ever haul of three medals — all bronze through Manu Bhaker, Swapnil Kusale and Sarabjot Singh.
PTI
