The Hindu : Sport : A day to remember for Rahi Sarnobat

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A day to remember for Rahi Sarnobat

V.V. Subrahmanyam

Ankush wins 50m free pistol gold

— Photo: Vivek Bendre

GLITTERING DISPLAY: Rahi Sarnobat with the 25m pistol gold.

PUNE: Ankush Bharadwaj and Rahi Sarnobat won gold in contrasting styles in the shooting events of the third Commonwealth Youth Games at the Shiv Chatrapathi sports complex here on Monday.

The 18-year-old Ankush picked up the 50m free pistol event gold despite having an off-day with a score of 509/600, well below his best of 538 registered at the Guwahati trials a few months ago.

“This was not the way I wanted to win the gold. I would have loved to give a better performance,” said Ankush.

The only other competitor in the fray — Murray Middleton of Falkland Islands — did not even finish the qualifying round after a disappointing score of 236. The gap in the scores in the qualification round was so much that the technical officials decided not to have the final round and declared the Indian as the winner.

Liberal

Commonwealth Games Federation president, Michael Fennel, said it was very disappointing to have only two entries for the event. “Normally, we would not have conducted a medal event. But, this being the Youth Games, we decided to be liberal,” he said.

It was a rare sight to see only one person on the podium — Ankush — after Murray was not awarded any medal as per the Games’ norms. The 18-year-old Rahi Sarnobat was the clear winner in the 25m pistol event with 748.10, followed by Binti Azhari Alia Sazana of Malaysia (742.90) and Aussie Hayley Chapman (729.30).

Rahi, who was inspired to take up shooting after watching Tejaswini Sawant win a medal in the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, has done well in the two years she has been in the sport.

After the qualifying round, Rahi and Binti were tied at 550. However, once the final rounds began, the Kolhapur shooter surged ahead. In the final four rounds, Rahi came up with impressive scores of 48.90, 50.70, 49.70 and 48.80 to put the issue beyond doubt.

When the final results were declared, Rahi’s joy knew no bounds. “I am delighted with this gold and that too in front of my home crowd. This is a great day in my career,” said the first year BBA student of Vivekananda College (Kolhapur).

“I did not bother to look at the score and was not worried about what my opponents were doing. I just tried to shoot to the best of my ability,” Rahi said. When chief national coach Sunny Thomas walked across to congratulate her, Rahi was overjoyed.

India could have picked up a bronze in the women’s 10m air rifle event but Ayonika Paul became nervous in the final and finished with a score of 491.7.

For the winner, the 17-year-old Aqilah Binte Sudhir of Singapore with an aggregate score of 501.0, it was her maiden gold in an international event. Monica Fyfe of Canada (496.1) and Farhana Binti Abdul Hali Nur Ayuni of Malaysia (492.2) took the silver and bronze respectively.

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