India’s Ravi Kumar kept his nerves to win a shoot-off to bag the bronze medal in the men’s 10m Air Rifle event at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast on Sunday.
Ravi Kumar, who had won a Bronze medal in last month’s International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup in Guadalajara, Mexico, as well, shot an impressive 10.6 in the shoot off as against the 10.4 from Australia’s Alex Hoberg after both were tied on 204.6 for the third spot.
The final was topsy-turvey affair for Ravi Kumar, who did not start well but was in second spot after 18 of the 24 shots in the final.
Earlier, India’s Deepak Kumar had topped the qualification standings with a Games record of 627.2 while Ravi Kumar was second with a score of 626.8.
Deepak Kumar finished sixth in the final.
Australian Dane Sampson, a six-time Oceania champion struck Gold with a Games Record score of 245.0 after 24-shots in the final. Bangladesh’s Baki Abdullah Hel repeated his Glasgow games Silver winning performance in the event, finishing with 244.7.
In the women’s Skeet, Saniya Sheikh finished fourth, a double miss on the 39th and 40th targets out of a maximum of 60 in the finals, seeing her agonisingly miss out on a Bronze medal by a margin of one.
She had earlier shot 71 out of 75 in qualifying to finish second, winning a shoot-off to determine final qualification standings in the process. The other Indian in the field, Maheshwari Chauhan, shot 68 to finish eighth.
The gold medal went to Cyprus’ Andri Eleftheriou, a former World Championship Bronze medalist and World Cup and World Cup finals winner. She shot 52 out of 60 to finish ahead of England’s Rio Olympics finalist Amber Hill, who finished with 49. Bronze went to another Cypriot, Panagiota Andreou who finished with 40, while Saniya shot 32 in the finals.