Toyota, Sep 28 (IANS) The pistol event kept on misfiring for India at the Asian Games 2026 after the women’s team failed to bag a medal in the 25m pistol team event with a fifth-placed finish in the final at the Aichi Pref. General Shooting Gallery on Monday.
The Indian team, comprising double Olympic medallist Manu Bhaker, Asian Games silver winner Esha Singh and multi-time Asiad medallist Rahi Sarnobat, had a total of 1727-56x combined in the precision and rapid events as another medal slipped away.
Moreover, only Esha managed to qualify for the individual final after finishing eighth, while Manu was 11th and Rahi finished a further 30th out of the 44 shooters that were in the fray in the event.
Only the top eight shooters were to qualify for the final, and Esha managed to do that by virtue of hitting more bullseyes after she was tied with Chinese Taipei’s Yen-Ching Cheng with 580 points. Esha had hit 22x, while Cheng scored 20x.
Manu’s Asian Games campaign ended without a medal after she missed out on the women’s 25m pistol individual final, finishing 11th in qualification with 579-18x across the precision and rapid rounds over the two days, while Rahi had a disastrous outing in 30th with a score of 568-16x.
Earlier, Manu had reached the women’s 10m air pistol final but finished fifth with 181.1 points. India also missed out on a 10m air pistol team medal, finishing fourth.
India had a strong chance at the medal in the precision event today until Esha and Manu had scored 290 and 292 out of the possible 300 score in the rapid round. However, Rahi had a poor rapid series as she hit only 86 in her first 10 shots out of 100 points available.
She made a comeback later with a strong score of 99 in the second rapid series and a 96 in the final series, but the damage was already done in the first series when she scored only 86. She even hit the in the first rapid series, which led India to drop out of medal contention.
China won the team gold with a score of 1743-68x, while South Korea won a silver with 1735-65x, while Chinese Taipei bagged bronze with 1734-48x; India were further behind with 1727-56x.
Esha was the only saving grace in this event as she made it to the individual 25m final, which is scheduled to take place at 10:45 AM IST later today.
India have only one medal from the pistol events so far at the Asian Games, and that was a gold in the mixed 10m air pistol event, where Kamaljeet and Suruchi Singh won the yellow metal with a stellar performance.
India earlier missed medals in the 10m air pistol men’s and women’s events too.
–IANS
