The Hindu : Sport / Shooting : Raghunath wins gold

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 01, 2008
ePaper

Sport

Sport - Shooting

Raghunath wins gold

AHMEDABAD: In the absence of Olympic quota holders Gagan Narang and Abhinav Bindra, shooters from the defence services ruled the ranges as Navyman P.T. Raghunath enjoyed his good form to win the gold medal in the men’s 10m air rifle event, in the 51st National shooting championship here on Monday.

Raghunath is no stranger to a pressure situation, especially after having won gold medal at the Asian championship in Kuwait in early this month.

In fact with nothing to prove after the closure of Olympic qualifications, Raghunath made sure he was on the radar when the national squad for the 2008 world meets are decided.

The Navy shooter scored 595 in the qualification rounds and made it to the eight-man final with a three point lead.

In the final, Raghunath shot an impressive 105.6 for a total of 700.6. Army’s Hardeep Singh bagged the silver medal with a total of 695.9 after outdoing Sanjeev Rajput and Satyendra Singh in the final with a round of 103.9.

Rajput finished third for the bronze medal after the trio had made it to the final with 592.

Navy wins

Navy expectedly won the team gold with Raghunath, Rajput and Shankar Kakade contributing to the total of 1774.

Army (1770) settled for the silver medal and Maharashtra (1744) pocketed the bronze.

In the men’s 50m free pistol event, Army’s Bapu Vanjare struck gold with the out-of-form Samresh Jung skipping the Nationals. Vanjare shot 556 in the qualification round to be one point behind Navy’s Omkar Singh (557).

In the final, however, Vanjare added a perfect 90 for a total of 646 while Omkar ended with 87.8 to get the silver medal. Viraj Singh of Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) won bronze with a total of 642.3.

The results: Men: 10m Air rifle: 1. P. T. Raghunath (Navy) (595, 105.6) 700.6, 2. Hardeep Singh (Army) (592, 103.9) 695.9, 3. Sanjeev Rajput (Navy) (592, 101.2) 693.2.

Team: 1. Navy (Raghunath, Rajput, Shankar Kakade) 1774, 2. Army (Naresh Kumar, Satyendra Singh Parmendra Kumar) 1770, 3. Maharashtra (Navnath Fartade, Sandeep Tarte, Ashok Karande) 1744.

Junior: 1. Aneesh Verma Reddy (AP) 587, 2. Minit J. Shah (Mah) 583, 3. Parth Agarwal (MP) 581.

Team: 1. Maharashtra (Kanhaiya Babar, Fulchand Bangar, Shah) 1735, 2. Uttar Pradesh (Vipin Rana, Ravi Kumar, Bharat Tomar) 1731, 3. Madhya Pradesh (Navdeep Singh, Agarwal, Viren Dutta) 1721.

50m Free pistol: 1. Bapu Vanjare (Army) (556, 90.0) 646.0, 2. Omkar Singh (Navy) (557, 87,8) 644.8, 3. Viraj Singh (ITBP) (548, 94.3) 642.3.

Team: 1. Navy (Anil Kumar, Omkar Singh, Satendra Kumar) 1628, 2. Army (Gurjeet Singh, Raj Kumar, Vanjare) 1627, 3. Indo-Tibetan Border Police (Umesh Chandra, Viraj Singh, Shambhu Sanker Singh) 1588.

Junior: 1. Zakir Khan (IA) 544, 2. Amanpreet Singh (IA) 541, 3. Amit Kumar (MP) 538.

Team: 1. Army (Pankaj Kalakoti, Anit Singh, Kapil Tomar) 1592, 2. Uttarakhand (Ankush Bhardwaj, Kartikey Joshi, Kartikey Sharma) 1498.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport