In what seemed like a great qualification round at the start for Gagan Narang ended with the shooter getting eliminated as he scored below par in his last series and failed to qualify for the final round of the men’s 50m rifle prone event at the Olympic Shooting Centre in Rio De Janeiro. The 33-year old shooter scored a total of 623.1 points in the qualification round as he finished 13th in the points table. There was more bad news regarding the elimination of fellow shooter Chain Singh who could not manage a route to the final round as he finished 36th in the standings with 619.6 points.
Gagan Narang started the qualification round by obtaining a pretty 104.7 points in his first series out of the six. He saw himself getting into the top 10 shooters in the points table and secured 104.4 points in his second series, placing him comfortably at the 5th spot. The shooter continued his bright start to the event and it seemed Narang was ready to fight for the top spot. The Indian shot another 104.6 points in his third round to maintain his third position in the table.
Narang had started off well in the men’s 10m air rifle event as well but had to bow out after he could not capitalize. He could not maintain his great start and had a bump in the road in his fourth series as he could only accumulate 103.0 points. This resulted in the shooter falling to the 7th spot in the table. But Narang seemed to have learned from his mistakes of last event and fired 104.0 points in his fifth series, maintaining his consistency. The sixth series was very important for Narang as a drop in points would have seen him lose out on a top-8 position. But the shooter could not finish off well as just 102.4 points in his last series saw him finish out of the top-8 rankings.
Chain Singh, on the other hand, started with a score of 104.1 points which saw him placed comfortably in the table at the start. But a disappointing 101.0 points in his second series saw Singh drop to the 38th spot out of the 47 total shooters in the competition. The 27-year had fought illness just ahead of Rio and the shooter seemed to have fought the bad start to the event as well. Singh fired an impressive 104.4 points in his third series to see himself lifted to the 30th position in the points table.
However, Chain’s shooting was very inconsistent as he could only manage 102.4 points from his fourth series which saw a decline in his rankings to 39th. Chances of qualifying for the final round seemed bleak for the shooter already as a miracle could only save him. But it was not to be his day, as Singh finished with 103.9 and 103.8 points from his fifth and sixth series respectively. This meant that the 27-year old finished at the 36th spot with a tally of 619.6 points.
Russia’s Sergey Kamenskiy finished the round at the top spot with 629 points whereas his Russian compatriot Kirill Grigoryan finished at the 2nd spot with 628.9 points. Here is the final list of top-8 shooters who will compete in the final round which takes place at 7:30 PM IST:
