Asian Games 2023: Shooters give medal rush, India get gold in 25m pistol, silver in 50m rifle 3 position team events

It was a golden Wednesday for India at the Asian Games thanks to the women shooters who started off Day 4 with a bang.

The trio of Manu Bhaker, Esha Singh, and Rhythm Sangwan won gold in the women’s 25m pistol team event, beating China by three points. The Indian shooters finished with a combined score of 1759 after three series each in the precision and rapid rounds while China got the silver medal with a combined score of 1756 and the shooters from South Korea settled for the third position to get bronze with a total score of 1742.

This was India’s fourth gold at the Hangzhou games, taking their overall medal tally to 16. The other three gold medals came in 10m air rifle shooting men’s team event, women’s cricket, and the dressage team event in equestrian.

Manu also topped the qualification after finishing the last rapid-fire series with 98. Her total score after precision and rapid stage was 590 (28x inner 10s). Esha was fifth with a score of 586 (17x). Manu and Eash qualified for the finals of the individual round at the same event. The team medals are given based on cumulative scores of the individual rounds.

Rhythm, despite dishing out a terrific performance, missed out on an individual qualification. The world record holder finished 7th. Only two shooters from one team are allowed to go ahead.

The 25m pistol event is divided into two parts – precision and rapid. The precision stage took place on Tuesday where Manu was top and Eash was joint second in the individual list. In the team scores, India never let anyone beat them. They were not dislodged from the top spot even once during the course of two days.

They claimed the top prize minutes after another trio of Indian shooters dished out an excellent performance to win a silver medal in the women’s 50m rifle 3 position event. Ashi Chouksey, Manini Koushik and Sift Kaur Samra combined to shoot a total of 1764 points in the qualification to finish second on the podium.

Hosts China won the gold with an aggregate score of 1773, while South Korea bagged the bronze with a total score of 1756. Sift and Chauksey qualified for the finals as well by finishing second and sixth respectively, while Kaushik bowed out in the individual event by finishing 18th. Sift scored a total of 594 to create a joint new Asian record for qualifying.