Indian shooters bag gold, two silvers

NEW DELHI - Indian shooters bagged a gold medal and two silvers in just an hour Tuesday. Heena Sidhu and Annu Raj Singh won the yellow metal in the women’s 10 metre air pistol pairs event at the Karni Singh Shooting Range here, giving India its 31st gold medal in the 19th Commonwealth Games and the 14th from shooting.

World champion Tejaswini Sawant won the silver in the women’s 50 metre prone event and ‘Goldfinger’ Samresh Jung and Chandrasekhar Kumar Chaudhary got the silver in the men’s 25 metre standard pistol pairs’ event.

In the women’s 10 metre air pistol, India, Australia and Canada were tied for the gold with 759 points. Canada got the bronze on the basis of lesser number of perfect 10s, they shot 14, while India and Australia had 21 each. India bagged the gold on the basis of count-back.

Heena (384) and Annu (375) clinched the 14th gold medal from the shooting range. The silver went to Australian shooters Dina Aspandiyarova (384) and Pamela McKenzie (375) and Canadian duo Dorothy Ludwig (380) and Lynda Hare (379) settled for the bronze.

In the women’s 50 metre prone event, Scotland’s Jen McIntosh won the gold with a Games record of 597. She broke the record of 590 set by Australian Carolyn Quigley and India’s Roopa Unnikrishnan at the 1998 Kuala Lumpur Games.

Tejaswini, who is India’s first women’s world champion, got the silver with a score of 594 and Welsh’s Johanne Brekke settled for the bronze with 593 points.

In the men’s 25 metre standard pistol, Jung (561) and Chaudhary (542) got the silver with a score of 1,103. The gold went to Singapore’s Bin Gai (564) and Lip Meng Poh (552) with a total score of 1,116. England’s veteran shooter Michael Gault (554) and Iqbal Ubhi (544) won the bronze with a total of 1,098.