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Journalism of Courage
Not a single Indian men’s or women’s 10m air pistol shooter was able to make it to the finals of their event at the 2023 Baku World Championships on Thursday, failing to take the opportunity of winning Paris Olympic quota spots on offer. Despite newer faces making the team in both men’s and women’s events, the results remained similar to the 2022 World Championships, where Indian pistol shooters were unable to crack the code in Cairo and win a quota or a medal.
Both Singh and Cheema finished on 578 and 577 points respectively. For Singh, who was part of the Indian contingent at the Baku World Cup a few months ago, the second and third series (94 and 95) went poorly and from that point on, it was an uphill task to move up the standings. He had won the mixed event gold here in May but on Thursday, could only finish 18th. Cheema finished eight places below on 26th to round out the men’s event. Their aggregate score of 1734 did earn them a bronze medal in the team event. But no Paris quota is awarded for the achievement.
Chinese shooter Zhang Bowen coasted to the top of the qualification charts with an aggregate of 587 and followed it up with a gold medal in the final, shooting 244.4 points for the win.
Women off target too
While the men’s team missed out on qualification to the finals due to a few bad shots, the women’s team never looked at any point as if they were going to make it to the finals. The trio of Esha Singh, TS Divya and Palak finished 32nd, 40th and 66th respectively in the women’s 10m air pistol event.
Esha’s road to the finals was marred by a poor third series where she could only score 92 points and then a 94 in the fifth series put her out of contention for the finals by 4 points. Palak too went through the same issues when she shot a 93 in the third series, and then again in the sixth to end her event. Divya, who had won gold here along with Sarabjot Singh (and had beaten world champions Zorana Arunovic and Damir Mikec of Serbia) could only stitch together a score of 566.
Anna Korakaki aced the qualification stage in the women’s event with a score of 584 but could only manage the silver medal after China’s Jiang Ranxin scored 239.8 in the final to take the gold.
On Friday, Indians will be in action in three events – the 10m air rifle mixed team, the 10m air pistol mixed team and the women’s skeet event.
