India’s Deepak Kumar finished seventh the men’s 10m air rifle final of the International Shooting Sport Federation World Cup in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil and failed to book a place in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
After needing to finish above any one of two competitors to secure a quota place, Deepak was left ruing a poor start to finish below both of them and thereby miss out.
Earlier, Deepak had bagged the eighth and final qualifying spot with a brilliant finish at the end and a score of 627.9 after 60 qualifying shots. Five of the eight finalists could not claim quotas and Deepak had to finish above either Australian Dane Sampson or Slovakian Patrik Jany to claim one of the two available Tokyo berths.
He was poorest off the blocks though, beginning with a couple of 9.7 and 9.2s, which eventually cost him the quota as even after shooting nothing below 10.0 in his next 12 shots, was eliminated after the 14th in seventh place.
Jany eventually won bronze and Sampson finished fourth to secure the quotas even as the gold when to Yu Haonan of China who broke both the senior and junior world records with a stunning 252.8 finish. Petar Gorsa of Croatia added a silver to go with his gold in the men’s rifle 3 positions on Thursday.
India otherwise fared admirably in gunning for the only quota place they could claim in the event, given Divyansh Singh Panwar had already won the other in the previous World Cup.
Young Yash Vardhan shot 627.7 to miss out on a finals spot by 0.2 finishing ninth, while debutant Kiran Ankush Jadhav shot 627.5 to finish 11th overall in the 88-strong field. India still top the medals tally with five more finals to go with a tally of two gold, one silver and one bronze medal.