Asian Rifle/ Pistol Championship – The Hindu

Manu Bhaker narrowly missed out on a gold as she went down to Vietnam’s Nguyen Thuy Trang in the 25m women’s pistol, which was decided at the end of two shoot-offs, in the Asian Rifle/ Pistol Championship at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range here on Monday.

Esha Singh won her second individual medal of the championship by bagging a bronze.

Naamya Kapoor clinched gold in the junior category in another tense shoot-off while Anjali Bhagwat secured the bronze in the same event. India took its total tally to 60 medals, including 37 gold, 13 silver and 10 bronze.

In the final, Esha started with a perfect five in the first series while Manu and Thuy Trang hit four. All three were trading the medal positions after each series in the tightly-contested title clash.

Pressure

The Indians were putting pressure on the Vietnamese shooter, but a perfect five shots in the sixth series saw her take a two-point lead. Manu and Esha took advantage of Nguyen’s one-shot seventh series to close the gap.

Esha, who was leading with a score of 30 at the end of the eighth series, missed all her shots in the ninth series to eventually finish with bronze. In the last series, Manu hit three shots while Thuy Trang hit two shots to take the final to a shoot-off.

In the first shoot-off, both hit two shots each. In the following shoot-off, Manu missed three shots and took the silver medal.