Indian shooters win two Bronze, Gagan flops

Doha, Dec 2 (UNI) India's high profile campaigner Gagan Narang failed as the fancied shooters opened their campaign on a none-too-happy note, winning two Bronze medals in the 15th Asian Games here today.

Both the medals came in the 10m Air rifle team events with the Indian men aggregating 1776 and missing the silver by a whisker to South Korea (1777), while the women totalled 1181 for the third place.

China won Gold in both the events, while Singapore won Silver in women's section.

The biggest disappointment for India came when Gagan Narang, ranked eighth in the world, ended a poor fifth in 10m Air Rifle individual event.

In the women section, Avneet Kaur was placed fifth and Tejaswani Sawant eighth.

Gagan, who had qualified for the finals with a score of 595, shot 101.4 to total 696.4. This was was far below his career best of 700.2 (597+103.2), which he had in the World Cup at Guangzhou to leapfrog to the world number one slot.

The Hyderabad-based shooter had a series of 10.1,10.1,9.9, 10.2,9.9,10.4,10.6,10.0 and 10.0 in the final.

In this open event, the Gold was claimed by China's Tianyou Liu, who had a score of 700.8 (598+102.8). He pushed his more fancied compatriot and Olympic gold medal winner Qinan Zhu to the second place and the latter ended with 698.3 (594+104.3).

Zhu had scored a point less then Gagan in the qualifying round but bounced back to take the Silver. Korea's Jaechul Yu earned the Bronze totalling 697.9 (596+101.9).

In the women section, the Indian trio of Avineet Kaur Sidhu (396), Tejaswani Sawant (395) and Suma Shirur (390) came up with a total of 1181 for the third place.

Avneet had a score of 99,99,99,99 in her round, while Tejaswani shot a series of 98,99,98,100 and Suma scored 99,100,94,97.

Avneet and Tejaswani qualified for the final and there Avneet scored 102.6 (9.9,10.2,9.9,10.6,9.7,10.6,10.5,10.5,10.1,10.6) to total 498.6 (396+102,6).

Tejaswani scored 102.1 with a series of .3,10.4,9.8,10.8,9.9,0.3,10.1,9.8,10.5,10.2 to have a grand total of 497.1 (395+102.1).

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