Jaspal Rana wins second gold

In other events, Jaspal’s sister, Sushma Rana, ended fifth in Individual Air Pistol final for women and Shilpi Singh was sixth, while Roopa Unnikrishnan failed to make the final eight in the Individual Sport Rifle, three positions.

The 22-year-old Jaspal, who shot a Commonwealth Games record score of 584 in the Badge match, tallied 581 this morning, which despite getting him the gold was a low score by the standards he has set for himself. He had a shot a brilliant 587 in the Pairs event but this afternoon he talled 581, the same as he hadfour years ago in Victoria City Commonwealth Games. Ashok Pandit, who had a poor 567 in the Pairs event, improved considerably but not enough to get into the medals. The 1990 Commonwealth Games gold medallist ended sixth with 574.

The similarity between Jaspal’s winning efforts of 1994 and 1998 was stark to miss. Four years ago, the Delhi-based shooter had, with the same score of 581, tied with Michael Galt, and then won in a shoot-out. This time, the shoot-out was with Allan McDonald of South Africa. In the tie-shoot — Rana has rarely lost a shoot-out — the Indian scored 149 out of 150, while South African Allan McDonald crumbled under pressure with 145 out of 150.

McDonald was second with 581, the same score as Jaspal, while John Rochon of Canada just edged out his Hungarian-born teammate Metodi Igorov.

The fact that he has had some problems with his pistol here in Kuala Lumpur seemed to have played on Jaspal’s mind. Initially, he shot with his sister, Sushma Rana’s pistol, but later his coach TiborGonzcol, got him spare parts to repair his pistol in time.

Jaspal likes shooting fast. And in the Pairs he showed that with a 297 out of 300. But in the Individual event he was off-colour as he shot only 288. There was not a single perfect card and twice he went down as low as 47 out of 50. He was the seventh best in the field in rapid as most shooters faced a huge swing between rapid and precision shooting.

Only Allan McDonald was somewhat consistent with 288 (third best) in precision and 293 (second best) in rapid. But Jaspal was saved by his precision shooting, where he improved on his score from the 290 to 293 and was the best today. His final card of 50 in the precision got him the tie-shoot with McDonald. Michaelengeo Giustiniano who had the best score of 294 in rapid failed miserably in precision with 273 and ended 11th overall.

In the Individual Sport Rifle three positions, Roopa Unnikrishnan, winner of gold in the Sport Rifle, Prone, failed to make the top eight in the qualifying round endingup 11th with 554. Anjali Vedpathak was 17th with 549.

In the qualifying round of the Air Pistol event, Sushma Rana was lying fourth with 374 out of 400. India’s other entry, Shilpi Singh, who recently became the youngest recepient of the Arjuna Award, had the same score.With the top eight moving into the final round of 100 shots, where it is possible to more than hundred with each bulls eye fetching 10.9 points, Sushma shot a 96.9 and slid to fifth overall and Shilpi was sixth.

Results

Men: Individual centre fire pistol: 1. Jaspal Rana (Ind) 581; 2. Allan McDonald (RSA) 581; 3. John Rochon (Can) 576. 6. Ashok Pandit (Ind) 574.

Women: Individual air pistol: 1. Annemarie Forder (AUS) 480.6 (New GR); 2. Christine Trefry (AUS) 476.9; 3. Tania Corrigan (NZL) 476.3. 5. Sushma Rana (Ind) 470.9; 6. Shilpi Singh (Ind) 468.7.