The Hindu : Sport / Shooting : Pournima Zanane takes 10m air rifle honours

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 12, 2005

Sport

Sport - Shooting

Pournima Zanane takes 10m air rifle honours

HYDERABAD, JAN. 11. Ashok Pandit and Pournima Zanane shared the penultimate day's honours of the Sardar Sajjan Singh Sethi memorial Master shooting championships here on Tuesday.

For Pandit, a seasoned campaigner with over 25 years experience behind him, the 25m standard pistol competition turned out to be just another day at the office and was an improvement on his displays at the Indore Nationals and Asansol.

So much so that he was quite jovial about the tie-breaker with Naresh Kumar of the Border Security Force (BSF). Pandit was assured of the gold, despite Naresh upstaging him in the shoot-out to break the deadlock, for the latter had failed to figure in the top 10 at Indore, a pre-requisite for a medal in this championship. Pandit had finished eighth, while Naresh had been placed 17th.

Pournima Zanane and Anjali Bhagwat were tied with 397 points in the 10m air rifle event for women. The scores were identical in the third and fourth cards, while the Olympian had 99 against Zanane's 98 in the second.

The gold however went to the latter, a Central Railway senior clerk stationed at Victoria Terminus in Mumbai, for Bhagwat had skipped the Indore Nationals, wanting rest after the Athens Games.

Without dreaming too much of a medal, performance mattered most to Pournima, who was confident of a good score. Setting out in the sport only in 2000 and without a coach, her skills were acquired mostly by observing Anjali and the other accomplished Mumbai-based crackshots.

With a dozen World Cups behind her, Pournima has a personal best of 399, registered at the Bangkok chapter. In other international competition, she won silver at the Asian shooting championships at Kuala Lumpur and the SAF Games at Islamabad.

The results:

Men's 25m standard pistol: 1. Ashok Pandit (Mah) 565, 2. Samresh Jung (CISF) 562, 3. Vijay Kumar (Army) 561.

Team: 1. Army (Vijay Kumar 561, C.K. Chaudhary 565, Pemba Tamang 553) 1669, 2. Navy (Rahul Panwar 553, Harpreet Singh 549, Satendra Kumar 544) 1646, 3. BSF (Mohinder Lal 531, Naresh Kumar 565, Manju Nath 543) 1639.

Women's 10m air rifle: 1. Pournima Zanane (RSPB) 397, 2. Kuheli Gangulee (CISF) 394, 3. Deepali Deshpande (RSPB) 394.

Team: 1. Railway Sports Promotion Board (Rakhee Samant 391, Pournima Zanane 397, Anuja Jung 389) 1177, 2. Maharashtra (Shweta A. Todankar 381, Anjali Bhagwat 397, Tejaswini R. Sawant 391) 1169, 3. Manipur (Nongthombam Indrasini 386, T. Aruna Devi 382, G.A. Supriya Devi 381) 1149.

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