Press trust of India
New Delhi, Sept 27: Beijing Olympics champion Abhinav Bindra produced some excellent shooting to clinch the gold while Gagan Narang failed to finish on the podium in the men’s 10m Air Rifle event of the Asian Air Gun Championships here Sunday.
The 32-year-old Bindra shot 208.3 points to bag the top prize ahead of Kazakhstan’s World No. 8 Yurkov Yuriy (206.6) and Korea’s Yu Jaechul (185.3) on the first day of competition at the Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range. Narang finished fourth with a score of 164.5 points while, Chain Singh was two places below at sixth with 122.7 points.
Narang started on a good note, shooting 10.6 and 10.6, but fell behind in the following attempts while Chain Singh was out after a shoot-off with Korea’s Kim Dajin.
Bindra, however, maintained his consistency and was way ahead of the rest of the pack when the finals ended. “A lot of training has gone into it. I am always trying to do the best I can. It may look easy but I can guarantee it’s very, tough,” Bindra said after his triumph.
“It’s always good to win medals. It’s a good preparation for Rio Olympics because there were medals at stake. When there is a medal involved we can’t call it practice because there is varying degree of pressure,” India’s only Ilympic gold medallist added.
India won the gold medal in the 10m air rifle team event too with Bindra, Narang and Chain shooting a total of 1868.6 points. They were followed by the Korean and Saudi Arabian sides.
India also won a gold and a silver in the youth section while the junior boys bagged two silver medals. Satyajeet Kandhol won the gold medal in the 10m air rifle youth category after he shot 204.8 points to pip Chinese Taipei’s Shao-Chuan Lu (203.7) for the top spot.