Doha: Teen shooter Saurabh Chaudhary claimed the silver medal in men’s 10m air pistol event to continue India’s surge at the 14th Asian Championships here Monday.
The 17-year-old World Cup and the Asian Games gold medallist shot 244.5 to finish second on the podium behind North Korea’s Kim Song Guk, who won gold with a world record score of 246.5.
With 583, both Saurabh Chaudhary and Abhishek Verma had qualified for the finals in seventh and sixth place, respectively.
However, Verma had to be satisfied with a fifth-place finish in the eight-man final, having managed only 181.5 points. The trio of Chaudhary, Verma and Sharvan Kumar bagged the team bronze with a total of 1740 points in the qualifying, finishing behind China (1745) and Korea (1744).
Reigning Youth Olympics champion Chaudhary had a great start to the final and had a series of 10 and above scores but the North Korean was in a league of his own on the day.
Shreya Agrawal and Dhanush Srikanth won the gold medal in the 10m air rifle mixed team junior competition, while Gurnihal Garcha, Abhay Singh Sekhon and Ayush Rudraraju claimed the team gold in the junior men’s skeet.
Shreya and Dhanush beat their Chinese opponents 16-14 in the gold medal match after coming through two rounds of qualifying.
In all, India picked up eight medals on the day. India have so far won six Olympic quotas across events from the prestigious championship, taking their total to 15.
PTI
