New Delhi: Ace Indian shooter Gagan Narang has finally set the ball rolling and ended India's medal drought at the London Olympics after clinching bronze medal in the 10 Metre Air Rifle event with an overall score of 701.1.
Narang who qualified for the finals after a score of 598 and finished third amongst the eight qualified shooters started off well in the finals. He shot 10.7 at the first go but then hit an average 9.7 in the subsequent attempt. Gagan however kept his cool and jumped back into contention with scores of 10.6, 10.7, 10.4 and 10.6 and was at the third position.
But then somehow he lost the plot and shot one more under 10 and was overtaken by Wang Tao for the third position. It looked like one more heartbreak was on the cards for the shooter but then a 9.2 by the Chinese Wang saw Gagan ahead of him by 0.1.
After that it was no looking back for him in and shots of 10.3 and 10.7 saw him race to glory.
29 year old shooter from Hyderabad who earlier saw his compatriot and gold medalist at the Beijing Games Abhinav Bindra crash out of the qualifiers made it count and his persistence finally paid off as he won an Olympic medal something which eluded him in two prior attempts.
Gagan who is featuring in his third Olympics has ended on the podium several times including four golds at the 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth was hoping that he gets lucky this time at the mega event and it indeed proved wonderful for him.
His jinx breaking performance would now make him more confident ahead of the other events that he would take part in London. Others competition he will participate in is 50 m rifle prone and 50 m rifle 3 positions.
Alin George Moldovean of Romania (702.10) won the gold medal while Niccolo Campriani ( 701.5) of Italy won the silver medal.
Gagan scores in the final round: 10.7, 9.7, 10.6, 10.7, 10.4, 10.6, 9.9, 9.5, 10.3, 10.7.
By Indian Sports News Network
