3 Indian shooters who narrowly missed out on a medal at Paris 2024 Olympics ft. Manu Bhaker
Indian shooters had quite a good outing at the Paris Olympics. India had sent a 21-member contingent to compete across all 15 shooting events at Paris 2024 and was expecting several medals. This was India's biggest shooting contingent at the Summer Games.
Three bronze were earned by Indian shooters in the 2024 Olympics in Paris. Leading the Indian team with two bronze was Manu Bhaker, who had to face an emotional campaign in Tokyo 2020 after her pistol malfunction.
She placed third individually in the women's 10m air pistol competition in Paris before teaming up with Sarabjot Singh in the mixed 10m air pistol competition. In the bronze-medal match, the pair defeated their opponents from the Republic of Korea.
Manu Bhaker became the first Indian to win two medals at the same Olympics since the country's independence in 1947. In the men's 50m 3 event, Swapnil Kusale secured the third podium spot, earning India its first-ever medal in the competition. However, there were also some other instances where Indian shooters just missed out on a podium finish.
Manu Bhaker
Ace Indian shooter Manu Bhaker came just short of a hat-trick in the women's 25-meter air pistol competition at the National Shooting Center in Chateauroux.
She spent the majority of the final in the top three spots, but a dismal series in the latter stages saw her fall to fourth place following a shoot-off with Hungary's Veronika Major. In the end, Veronika Major took home the bronze. In a shoot-off, Jiin Yang of the Republic of Korea defeated Camille Jedrzejewski of France to win the gold.
At the Paris 2024 Games, Manu Bhaker made history despite the way her campaign concluded.
Arjun Babuta
Indian shooter Arjun Babuta, who was competing in men's 10m air rifle, finished fourth in the final with a total score of 208.4, just missing out on bronze. With a score of 209.8, Miran Maricic of Croatia qualified for the medal round. The Indian marksman was only 1.4 away from guaranteeing himself a medal.
With a 10.7 to start, the 25-year-old Babuta took early control of the championship. After 10 shots, he scored 105.0, placing him third behind Miran Maricic (105.1) and Lihao Sheng (105.8). He did, however, finish just outside of the medal position with a 9.9 on his 13th stroke and a 9.5 on his 20th and final shot.
Arjun Babuta secured seventh position with a score of 630.1 during the qualifying rounds. In both the men's and women's events, the top eight shooters advanced to the final.
Anantjeet Singh Naruka & Maheshwari Chauhan
After falling to the People's Republic of China in the bronze-medal match, Indian shooters Anantjeet Singh Naruka and Maheshwari Chauhan had to settle for fourth place in the skeet mixed team shooting event at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
Anantjeet Singh Naruka and Maheshwari Chauhan lost the bronze at the Chateauroux to Jiang Yiting and Lyu Jianlin of China, 44–43. Naruka fired eight rounds, missing two, but he recovered to hit 16 targets. Chauhan missed the last shots in the second, third, and fourth series despite having a strong start and hitting all four in the first series.
In the fifth and sixth series, both Indian shooters achieved flawless hits; but, Lyu Jianlin's 24/24 prevented India from leveling the score. Maheshwari Chauhan and Anantjeet Singh had finished fourth in the qualification stages with a combined score of 146/150, behind the Chinese pair who had shot the same but had finished third in a shoot-off.