Bindra In Rio 10m Air Rifle Quarters, Narang Bows Out  

Rio de Janeiro: Shooter Abhinav Bindra finished seventh to qualify for the 10 metre Air Rifle quarter-finals at the Rio Olympics while it was heartbreak for Gagan Narang who finished a lowly 23rd in the qualification round at the Olympic shooting centre here on Monday.

Bindra, India’s lone individual Olympic gold medallist, shot a cumulative score of 625.7 to end at the seventh spot and book his berth in the last eight, the competitions for which will be held later in the day.

Meanwhile, Narang could only manage 621.7 and crashed out of the event. Italian Niccolo Camprianni topped the list with an Olympic record score of 630.2 followed by Russian Vladimir Maslennikov who shot 629 and Croatia’s Petar Gorsa who finished third shooting 628.

Bindra, who is competing in his fifth Olympics, found himself at the 10th spot after scoring 104.3 at the end of the first series but dropped to 11th in the second with a cumulative score of 208.7.

Bindra picked pace in the third series to vault to the second position with a score of 314.6 but drastically dropped after sixth with some poor shots.

At the end of the fourth series, Bindra moved to fifth to be on course for qualification. However, the fifth round went horribly wrong for India’s flag-bearer in the Rio opening ceremony, who slipped to 10th.

In the final series, he brought himself back in contention to sit at eighth after a 10.8 in his sixth shot to finally book his berth for the quarterfinals.

Meanwhile, Narang had a forgettable outing as he fell from the top in the first series with a score of 105.3. He failed to recover in the subsequent series. After the second series, Narang occupied the second position with a score of 209.8 but a horrible third series saw him drop to 21st with 311.9.

Narang’s hopes crashed after he further dipped to 23rd towards the end of the qualification round.

--IANS