Shooting, Paris Olympics 2024 Highlights, August 2: Manu Bhaker qualifies for 25m pistol final after finishing 2nd in qualification

We’ll be back tomorrow for more skeet action. But the biggest focus, of course, will be on the 25m range where India will be represented by Manu Bhaker in the final at 1pm IST.

Naruka hits a 23 to move to 26th on the men’s skeet leaderboard.

Manu gets an 8. These are the only points she drops in the ongoing series.

Manu shoots the perfect first series in Rapid. She is 2nd on the leaderboard now.

A 97 in the last series means Esha can only finish 15th with an average mark of 9.683 per shot. All up to Manu in the next relay now.

Esha scores 96 in the second series. Things don’t look good for her. She is 14th on the standings now.

Esha starts with a 49 in the first series of five shots. She completes the first series with 97. She needs to improve to get into the top 8s. This won’t suffice. She is 10th as of now.

Naruka misses three clay targets in the second round.

Manu will try to maintain her rank and Esha will try to do better in the Rapid stage, which starts at 3:30pm IST. The top eight after the completion of that stage will make the final.

99 from Manu in the last series. Almost ended up taking the top spot! But she will have to be content with the third place after Precision. For now. Veronika Major of Hungary leads with 294-15x, Camille Jedrzejewski has 294-13x, and Manu has 294-7x. Each separated by a few inner-10s. 

Five 10s off the first five. Is Manu going for it? She is 2nd with five shots remaining in Precision. She has exorcised the Tokyo ghosts and how!

Manu drops a single point in her first five shots of the second series in precision. She finishes with 98 to jump up to the 7th place.

Anantjeet Singh Naruka shoots 23 in the first round. He is 24th.

The 50m rifle 3 positions final is over. Chiara Leone of Switzerland hits a 10.8 off her final shot to get gold. Her score of 464.4 is the new Olympic record. Sagen Maddalena of the US takes silver with 463.0 in a shoot-off that saw her pip Zhang Qiongyue. Zhang takes bronze with 452.9

Manu gets to 47 off her first five. Three 9s. She gets all 10s off the next five. Up to 12th now.

Rhythm Sangwan of India holds the Qualification World Record in this event. She had shot 595 in Baku on May 13, 2023. The QOR, meanwhile, belongs to China’s Zhang Jingjing who shot 592 in Rio 2016.

The athletes will now be instructed to unload their weapons and clear the tables, where they place the weapons and other shooting paraphernalia, for the rest of the athletes. The shooters would also have to collect the empty shells which would be strewn about in front of the firing point.

The mother of comebacks, this! Esha shoots a perfect 100 in the last series of Precision to propel herself to the third spot in Relay 1. Her total score in this stage is 291-6x.

Esha shoots a perfect five-shot series to come up to 6th.

Four 10s and an 8 from Esha. She is still 12th. Things are not looking good. Two more 9s after two 10s in the next series are enough to see her lose another place.

Esha drops three points in her first five shots. She drops two more points in the next five. Her score in the first series of 10 shots is 95. She is 12th in the field of 20 athletes.

Stay tuned! Anantjeet Singh Naruka’s event has been postponed by 30 minutes.

On firing point 10, Esha Singh (Bib No. 1439) is set to start in Relay 1. Manu Bhaker (1431) is on lane 25 and Relay 2. 

There are two stages in women’s 25m pistol. The first is called ‘Precision’ and the second is ‘Rapid Fire’. 

In precision, there are six series of five shots each which have to be completed in five minutes. Ahead of the start of each stage, the athletes may fire one series of five shots each on command. For both the sighting and the match shots in each of the stages, the athletes will get a minute to load. The red lights come on when the command of “Attention” is given. After a delay of 7±0.1 seconds, the green lights come on when the shots are to be fired. After the end of each series, the shooters are allowed a minute to unload. 

During each series of the Rapid-Fire Stage, the green lights come on for 3.1 seconds for each shot; the time between the transitioning of lights must be 7±0.1 seconds. Only one shot will be fired during each appearance of the green light, which must go off after 3.1 seconds, but the target must continue to record a valid shot for an additional 0.2 seconds.

In skeet, 125 targets are fired at over five rounds. The qualification is shot across two days. 

Target Shooting Sequence for Qualification Rounds:

Eventually, the six top athletes from qualification make the final.

12:30 - 25m pistol women’s qualification: Precision Stage (Manu Bhaker, Esha Singh)

12:30 (rescheduled to 13:00) - Skeet men’s qualification (Anantjeet Singh Naruka)

13:00 - 50m rifle 3 positions women’s final

15:30 - 25m pistol women’s qualification: Rapid Fire Stage (Manu Bhaker, Esha Singh)

The live telecast of the Paris Olympics will be available on Sports18 while the live streaming will be available on JioCinema in India from July 26 to August 11. Only the finals of the shooting events will be televised.

While you wait for the action to begin at the range, take a look at the list of Indians who are set to be in action at the Paris Olympics today.

Paris 2024 Olympics, Day 7: Indians in action today — August 2 schedule, full list of events, venues, timings in IST, live streaming info

On August 2, Indian athletes will be in action across multiple disciplines such as athletics, badminton, shooting, sailing, rowing, hockey and archery. 

Lock ‘n load! It’s almost time to climb aboard the hype train to Châteauroux, where 21 Indian shooters will take on the mission of going up against 321 of the world’s best to claim the ultimate prize — an Olympic medal.

The National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) announcing the squad way ahead of July 8 — the Paris 2024 entry deadline — felt like the calm before the storm. The shooters have had an acclimatisation and a hard-training camp at Volmerange-Les-Mines, followed by a two-week break while waiting for Judgement Day.

India has never had more shooters representing the country at the Olympics. Tokyo 2020 saw a previous best of 15. This time, among the 81 participating nations and the IOC (International Olympic Committee) Refugee Team, India will send the most shooters to France, tying with China, followed by the Republic of Korea, which has 16.

It is mostly a new-look squad except for familiar faces in pistol star Manu Bhaker and rifle wielders Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, Anjum Moudgil and Elavenil Valarivan. Having waded through the choppy waters of Tokyo, they will be up and running soon for a second shot at glory.

While those who have already performed on the biggest stage would believe that past experience will help them fare better this time, the debutants may be thankful for not having to carry any baggage from previous editions.

Let’s do a quick recap. After returning empty-handed from Tokyo, Indian shooters experienced a curious mix of highs and lows in the subsequent years. Amid developments like numerous rule changes and overhauls in the coaching set-up, several prominent names such as Saurabh Chaudhary, Abhishek Verma, Apurvi Chandela, and Rahi Sarnobat faded from scorecards for different reasons. A change of guard brought newcomers like Sift Kaur Samra and Sarabjot Singh to the forefront. Others, like Bhaker, entered recovery mode, deeply affected by the media scrutiny. However, she appears to have bounced back just in time.

One of the many factors that will work in favour of the Indians this time is the absence of Russia from the roster owing to the strict qualification restrictions in place after the latter invaded Ukraine.

Although the IOC stated that, as of July 13, 15 AINs (Athlètes Individuels Neutres/Individual Neutral Athletes) with Russian passports had qualified for the Summer Games in Paris (with a maximum of 55 eligible to make it), none of them happens to be shooters.

READ THE FULL PREVIEW BY SANTADEEP DEY HERE.