Stanislav lapidus, India’s rifle coach, was a picture of dejection. One hand on his face, he sat inside one of the competition halls at the Ongnyang Shooting Range.
One can’t even guess what he was thinking but disappointment was clearly the mood at that moment. One of his star pupils Gagan Narang, head down and face buried in his hands, was sitting at an arm’s length from him.
It was a day when 30 medals (10 each of gold, silver and bronze) were on offer in all shooting competitions and India shooters returned with just one bronze in women’s trap shooting team event. But the two venues – rifle and trap shooting – are around 75kms apart. The win at the Gyeonggido Shooting Range couldn’t lift the gloom at the Ongnyang Shooting Range.
Narang, 2012 london Olympics bronze medallist, was completely off-colour on Thursday. He shot a poor 618.4 with 31 inner-10s to finish 14th in the qualification round of the men’s 50m rifle prone. His teammate Joydeep Karmakar was 10th and Hariom Singh was way behind at 29th.
In the 25m standard pistol men’s competition, Samresh Jung’s 24th finish was the biggest setback. Jung, who earned the title of golden finger after winning seven medals (including 5 gold) at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, shot just 555. Gurdeep Singh hit 570 while Mahaveer Singh 559.
“It happens sometimes. It’s shooting. Sometimes you win medals, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes your best efforts aren’t good to win a medal while at other times, even a sub-par can bring you a medal. So it’s just a part of the game,” Samresh Jung told The Pioneer.
While there were excuses that the shooters were mentally fatigued as they have had to play three big tournaments back-to-back, Samresh owned up the responsibility and said that they didn’t play well enough to be on the podium.
“We just couldn’t perform at our level best in the past two days.
“I can’t speak for others but as for myself, I was expecting to shoot better today. But the there were mistakes. Every series had a small mistake and then they added up to become a big one,” he said.
SHAGUN & CO SAVE the DAY
When all hopes of winning a medal on Thursday seemed to be fading away, someone broke the news that women’s trio of Shagun Chowdhary, Shreyasi Singh and Varsha Varman won a bronze medal in the women’s double trap.
The trio shot a combined score of 279 to finish behind hosts South Korea, who won the Silver medal with a score of 314. The Gold went to the Chinese shot a world record 315.
This was India’s sixth bronze in as many days from the Shooting range and seventh medal overall. Jitu Rai, had won the only Gold for India thus far, in the 50m Pistol event on the opening day of the Games
In the individual section, Shagun Chowdhary’s score of 96 could only help her finish 8th, while Shreyasi finished 10th with a score of 94 and Varsha 12th with 89.