Guwahati, Feb 12 (IANS) Chain Singh upstaged Olympic bronze medallist Gagan Narang twice in three days in a rifle event final, as the Indian shooting squad extended its gold rush on day three of the shooting competition at the South Asian Games here on Friday.
India also swept all the four gold medals on offer at the Kahilipara Shooting Range here, a feat achieved for a second successive day after they had won all the five golds on Thursday.
It was also Chain’s fourth gold medal of the games. He had earlier won the team and individual gold in the men’s 50 metre rifle event and backed it up today with both the individual and team gold medals in the men’s 10m Air Rifle.
In a near repeat of the 50m event, Narang yet again topped the qualification round of the 10m Air Rifle with a score of 623.2 while Chain came in second logging 621.9. In the finals however the only time Gagan was ahead of Chain was after the first series of three shots.
After that Chain showed amazing consistency, except during the fifth series where he shot a couple of high 9s each, to register an array of high inner 10s to beat Bangladesh’s Sovon Chowdhury, who bagged the silver.
Chain eventually shot 204.6 in the finals to Sovon’s 203.6. Gagan claimed the bronze with a score of 182. The team gold in the event also went to the trio of Chain Singh, Gagan Narang and Imran Hasan Khan who totalled 1863.4 points to easily beat Bangladesh who finished with 1845.8. Sri Lanka claimed the bronze with a total combined score of 1827.2
The other shooting event of the day, the men’s 25m Standard Pistol, saw yet another top three finish for India when Neeraj Kumar won the gold with a score of 569, Gurpreet Singh the silver with 566 and Mahender Singh the bronze with a final score of 563 points.
The trio also pocketed the team gold in the event with a combined total of 1698. Pakistan claimed the silver with a score of 1663 and Sri Lanka the bronze totalling 1603 points.
So after three days of the shooting competition at the tournament, India stayed on top by a long distance in the shooting medal tally with 12 golds, six silvers and five bronze for a total of 23 medals in all. Bangladesh with the lone gold were second in the table with a total of five medals.