Shooting: Gagan Narang makes the finals, Bindra fails

Gagan Narang has qualified for the finals in the Men’s 10m Air Rifle event with a score of 598  in the qualification round. Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra wasn’t able to make the cut with a final score of 594. With these scores, Gagan finished in 3rd spot and Bindra in a rather disappointing 16th place.

Abhinav Bindra was the first to start between the two Indians and he scored 99, 99, 100, 100, 99 and 97 in his 6 series chances with 45 inner-10 shots. He had an outside chance until the final series but it was always going to be difficult given the scores of his opponents. Those hopes were dashed with Bindra shooting two consecutive 9′s and another 9 later to score a modest 97 in the final series, which wasn’t good enough to get him through.

Gagan Narang, on the other hand, started in pulsating form. He had perfect scores for 26 shots straight until on the 27th shot he hit a 9. He followed that with another 9 after two shots to go down lower in the pack at the end of the third series. He didn’t make any more mistakes from then on, finishing with 10′s in all his shots. He had scores of 100, 100, 98, 100, 100 and 100 with 53 perfect 10′s.

Niccolo Campriani of Italy and Alin George Moldoveanu of Romania finished above Gagan with Olympic record equaling 599 points. Bindra’s rival Qinan Zhu finished 10th and outside the finals contention with a score of 595 points.

The final will take place today at 12:15 PM London time or 4:45 PM IST.