Rana, Satendra settle for silver

Rana, who won two golds at the last Games in Victoria, had consistent score of 96 in the first three series, improved to 97 in the next two and then got into top gear and finished off with a superb 99. Kumar began with 96 and 94, then slipped to 91 in the third series, picked up again with 94 and 95 but finished poorly with a 92.

Gault, with 578, was closest to Rana and unless the Indian ace is in really bad form, the gold should be his in the individual event. Besides Gault,the only others to hit 570 and more were John Rochon of Canada (570), Friedhelm Sack of Namibia (575) and Bangladesh’s Nazrul Islam (572).

Gault’s partner Nick Baxter came up with a steady 567 which enabled the English pair to edge out Indians for the gold. John Rochon and Jean-Pierre Huot brought the bronze to Canada with a total of 1138.

Roopa Unnikrishnan and Anjali Vedpathak finished seventh while Shilpi Singh and Sushma Rana were sixth in the smallbore sports rifle and air pistol events yesterday.

The only other gold decided today had no Indian in it. The skeet pairs gold was won by Costas Stratis and Antonis Nicolaides of Cyprus with a score of 188. Australia’s Andrew Austin and Drew Harvey took the silver with 187 and Douglas McCutcheon and Joe Trinici of Canada claimed the bronze with 186.