Samresh misses Olympic berth, finishes 36th in World Cup

New Delhi, May 26 (UNI) Samresh Jung missed a chance to qualify for the Beijing Olympics as he finished a disappointing 36th in the 50m Free Pistol event at the Shooting World Cup in Munich.

The Commowealth Games gold medallist shot a score of 551 with a series of 97,91,94,89,89 and 91 and failed to qualify for the 2008 event. The Gold went to Joao Costa of Portugal with a score of 667.2 (567+100.2).

Costa came up with an incredible performance to beat Russian Vladimir Isakov, who started off as the leader with an advantage of five points from the qualifying series but had to be content with the Silver with a score of 666.6 (572+94.6).

Zongliang Tan of China won the Bronze with a score of 661.8 (564+97.8) while Kanstantin Lukashyk of Belarus grabbed the Olympic Quota place after finishing sixth in the event.

In the MQS section, Vivek Singh shot a score of 548 with a series of 94,93,91,92,91 and 87 while Ronak Pandit shot a score of 546 with a series of 91,91,89,94,90 and 91.

Meanwhile, in the Women's 25m Sports Pistol event, Sonia Rai had the best finish among the Indians at 40th after shooting 572 with Stage one score of 285 (96,96,93) and Stage two tally of 287 (94,95,98).

Saroja Kumari Juthu finished 77th with a score of 554. She shot 277 in Stage one (89,94,94) and 277 (89,96,92) in the second. The Gold was won by Mongolian Gundegnaa Otryad with a score of 793.4 (590+203.4), while Chinese Ying Chen and Fengji Fei won the Silver and Bronze with scores of 792.9 (587+205.9) 791.2 (589+202.2) respectively.

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