Manu Bhaker missed a medal by 0.1 point but captured the more important Olympic quota place in women’s air pistol in the shooting World Cup in Munich on Wednesday.
Despite shooting a 10.3, the best among the four shooters at the halfway stage of the final, Manu bowed out as she was overtaken by the slender margin by Anna Korakaki of Greece, the eventual gold-medallist.
The 17-year-old Manu had by then ensured her Olympic quota as both Korakaki and the subsequent bronze medallist Kim Minjung of Korea had already secured the Olympic quota. The silver medallist, Chinese Qian Wei, secured the other Olympic quota in the event.
Welcome change of fortunes
After having missed the 25-metre sports pistol Olympic quota on Tuesday in an agonising fashion after being the joint leader, owing to a second malfunction of her gun, it was welcome change of fortunes for the immensely talented and gutsy Manu, guided by the multiple Asian Games gold medallist Jaspal Rana.
Manu put up an impressive performance in qualifying as well. She took the third place with a score of 582, behind Olena Kostevych of Ukraine — who equalled the world record with 587 — and Julieta Mautone Jimenez of Uruguay — who shot a junior world record of 585 in a strong field of 136 shooters.
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Heena Sidhu, the two-time Olympian, shot 570 for the 45th place, while Yashaswini Singh Deswal did relatively better with 574 for the 22nd spot.
Manu won the seventh Olympic quota place for India for Tokyo 2020, behind Anjum Moudgil, Apurvi Chandela, Saurabh Chaudhary, Divyansh Singh Panwar, Abhishek Verma and Rahi Sarnobat.
Sunidhi Chauhan misses final
Earlier, Sunidhi Chauhan shot 1175 in women’s rifle 3-position event and missed the final on lesser inner-10s. Yulia Zykova of Russia, who had also shot 1175, went on to win the gold, 0.2 point ahead of Seonaid Mcintosh of Britain.
Despite no addition to its three gold medals won by Apurvi Chandela, Saurabh Chaudhary and Rahi Sarnobat so far, India continued to stay on top of the medals table ahead of China which had one gold, two silver and four bronze medals.
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In men’s 25-metre rapid fire pistol, Arpit Goel (577), Adarsh Singh (571) and Anish Bhanwala (567) fared below their best and did not stand a chance to make the final even as the competition was in progress.
There will only be the mixed air pistol and mixed air rifle events on Thursday, which offer only medals and no Olympic quota places. India had won both the gold medals in the last World Cup in Beijing.
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