India’s Deepak Kumar won India’s first silver and third medal at the ongoing 18t Asian Games with a superb showing in the men’s 10m air rifle final. It was the biggest career win for the 30-year-old, who was trailing at various points and was even involved in a shoot-off to avoid elimination in the fifth place, but produced the goods under pressure to score 247.7.
Ravi Kumar, who won the mixed team bronze, narrowly missed the podium, finishing fourth after a shoot-off with Deepak.
China’s defending champion Yang Haoran won the gold with a Games record of 249.1 while Shao-chuan Lu from Chinese Taipei, who had won the mixed team gold on Sunday, won the bronze.
Earlier in the qualification, Ravi and Deepal, with scores of 626.7 and 626.3 respectively, had finished in the fourth and fifth place.
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In the final, both Deepak and Ravi started well and were in the fourth and third positions respectively after the first series of five shots.
After the second series, Deepak Kumar dropped down one spot to fifth, while Ravi Kumar continues to be third and they maintained these positions heading into the eliminations.
After the first three eliminations, Deepak was fifth and was staring at an exit while Korea’s Song leapfrogged Ravi Kumar into third place. The Indian duo would have to fight each other to stay in the competition.
In the crunch shot, Deepak scored a 10.1 while Ravi shot 10.7, but the top three all shot in 9s and Song’s 9.4 meant he was tied at the last spot with Deepak.
But Deepak’s next shot is what set him apart – he came up with a perfect hit of 10.9 to go up third and confirm a medal for India.
In the shoot-off between both Indians, Deepak shot a 10.3 and 10.5 while Ravi’s 10.3 and 10.4 meant he fell agonisingly short and finished fourth.
In the shot to determine colour of medal, Deepak once again produced a superb shot of 10.8 and moved to the silver medal position. But a shot at gold was tough as the 22-year-old former world champion from China had maintained a big difference of 1.5 points.
However, a silver is a big achievement and will give him a huge boost. Incidentally, he had narrowly missed out on an individual medal at the year’s first ISSF World Cup at Mexico in a shoot-off with Ravi Kumar for bronze.