Shooters start well in Hangzhou

Hangzhou, Sep 24: The experienced trio of Mehuli Ghosh, Ramita Jindal and Ashi Chouksey’s bagged the women’s team silver while Ramita also clinched an individual bronze in the 10m air rifle event as Indian shooters made an impressive start to their Asian Games campaign, here on Sunday.
A combined score of 1,886.0 earned the Indian troika the second spot behind hosts China, who smashed the Asian record with a score of 1,896.6.
Junior world champion Ramita then won the individual bronze in her event, shooting 230.1 in the eight-shooter finals.
China won both the gold and silver medals in the event with Huang Yuting breaking the Games record with a score of 252.7 on way to top podium finish. Han Jiayu came in second with 251.3 points.
The 19-year-old Ramita was in contention for a silver medal before she fell behind because of a rank poor 9.9 on the 13th shot.
Mehuli, the other Indian to make the eight-shooter final, finished fourth with a score of 208.43.
Team Silver
Despite ending up second best to China in the team category, all three Indian women shooters were in the ‘zone’ on Sunday.
Ramita scored 631.9 in qualification to finish second, while Mehuli was fourth with a score of 630.8 points.The third Indian, Ashi, was slightly off-target, managing managing 623.3, to finish 28th in the qualification round.
But the combined score of the trio was good to earn them the silver and lift the morale of the Indian contingent, which is hoping to better the haul from the previous edition of the Games in Jakarta and Palembang, where they won nine medals.
The team medals in shooting are decided on the combined scores of a country’s shooters in the qualification round.
China won the team gold with all their three shooters — Han Jiayu, Huang Yuting and Wang Zhilin — firing on all cylinders to re-set the Games record.
Mongolia finished third with a combined scored of 1880.0.
World-class field: Ramita
Bronze-medal winner Ramita termed the competition “nerve-wracking” and a good experience as far as handling pressure is concerned.
“The level of competition is very high and we all know Asian Games is not easy for Indian shooters. It has to be world-class level. The final was so close and the difference (among shooters) were so little. There were shoot-offs and one shot is going to decide what happens next. It was nerve-wracking and very close and it was an experience for me,” said Ramita. (PTI)