Roopa rewrites National mark

Bangalore, Feb 2 Roopa Unnikrishnan, even while waiting for her visa to board the plane to the United States, helped herself to a gold in the 50 metres women8217;s Sport Rifle three position, her second at the 42nd National Shooting championships, with a national record to boot.

On Tuesday, at the JNR shooting range at SAI Southern Centre, Roopa who had earlier won the Sports Rifle prone, made it a golden double bagging the Sports Rifle 3 Position with a total of 655.8 out of 709 points to rewrite Zeny Thomas8217; 1995 Coimbatore National mark by 0.1 points. Qualifying with a total of 562 out of 600, which is her best ever to date, Roopa carried on the good work with four rounds of ten plus scores. Anjali Vedpathak of CISF who went in to the final with a score of 557 added 92.6 for a tally of 649.6 which earned her the silver. Deepali Deshpande of Maharashtra who had a qualifying total of 549 started as No 5 but finished with 95.4 and a total of 644.4 to pip Railways8217; Suma Dixit s-f:553; total 644.3 for thebronze. Anuja Tere was pushed to sixth place by Kuheli Ganguly.

A Rhodes scholar and a full blue who captained Oxford University but is now planning to take up a job as a management consultant in the US, Roopa who won the Commonwealth Games gold in prone, put to shade all her previous bests today.

Jaspal Rana was going great guns in the 25m rapid fire pistol men8217;s individual event. In the event which is spread over two days, Jaspal had a score of 288 out of 300 on day one, for a six-point lead over nearest rivals and Armymen, Bhanwarlal Dhaka, M S Suresh and Ved Prakash who were all on 282.

In the five shots fired in 8 seconds Jaspal had 99, an identical score in six seconds but fell back to a 90 in the four-second round. The shots will be repeated in the next course.