The Hindu : Sport / Shooting : Zoravar bags bronze

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 19, 2007
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Sport - Shooting

Zoravar bags bronze

NEW DELHI: Zoravar Singh Sandhu shot brilliantly over three days to bag the trap bronze in a strong field of 81 shooters in the shotgun World Cup at Changwon, Korea, on Tuesday.

The 29-year-old former SAF Games champion made the final as a joint leader, with a 121 out of 125, along with two others, but could muster only 20 out of 25 in the final in tough conditions.

In the tie-shoot when three fought for two medals, the Punjab lad missed the second bird while Alberto Fernandez of Spain grabbed the silver, despite shooting only a 117 in the preliminary phase. In fact, the Spaniard had grabbed the sixth and last spot in the final by winning a tie-shoot against five others by smashing 10 birds on the trot.

The other shooter with a 121 before the final and tied at 141, Jesus Serrano of Spain missed the first bird in the shoot-off to go out of medal contention.

Zoravar had spoilt his chances a bit in the morning with a fourth round of 22, after having shot 25, 25 and 24 in the first three, but wound up the qualifying phase strongly with a perfect 25.

It was the first medal in a world level competition for Zoravar who has generally been in the shadows of world champion Manavjit Singh Sandhu, Mansher Singh and Anwer Sultan.

Varga wins gold

Erik Varga of Slovakia who was one point behind leader Zoravar with a 73 out of 75 overnight, sustained the momentum to win the gold and an Olympic quota place, one point ahead of the other three.

Two other Indians — Mansher Singh and Birendeep Sodhi — were below par as they finished 47th and 52nd with scores of 109 and 108 respectively.

Shooting for the Minimum Qualifying Score (MQS), Anwer Sultan had a 112 with rounds of 23, 22, 21, 24 and 22.

The results:

Trap: 1. Erik Varga (Svk) 142 (121); 2. Alberto Fernandez (Esp) 141 (2) 117; 3. Zoravar Singh Sandhu 141 (1) 121; 47. Mansher Singh 109; 52. Birendeep Sodhi 108.

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