Asian Games: Shooters add to India’s medals tally, Pankaj in sight of gold (Afternoon Lead)
By IANSSunday, November 14, 2010
GUANGZHOU - Shooters added a silver and a bronze to India’s medals tally while world champion cueist Pankaj Advani kept alive hopes of defending his gold medal as he made it to the final of the English billiards singles at the Asian Games here Sunday.
India’s women shooters won the team silver in the 10 metres air pistol event after Vijay Kumar bagged the individual bronze in the men’s event.
Advani stormed into the final of the English billiards singles with a 3-2 victory over OO Kyaw Oo of Myanmar. Advani beat Kyaw 100-28, 0-100, 100-77, 11-100, 101-0 in the semi-final. The Banglorean will now take on Myanmar’s OO Nay Thway Oo, who beat Singapore’s veteran Peter Gilchrist 102-39, 101-71, 93-100, 43-100, 102-4.
In shooting, the trio of Heena Sidhu (381), Annu Raj Singh (380) and Sonia Rai (379) shot a total of 1,140 and missed the gold by a point at the Aoti Shooting Range. The South Korean team comprising Yunmi Gim (383), Byunghee Kim (379) and Ho Lim Lee (379) bagged the gold with 1,141 points.
The Chinese team of Sun Qi (385), Guo Wen Jun (382) and Su Yu Ling (372) settled for bronze with a total of 1,139 points.
Despite finishing on the podium in the team event, none of the Indian girls qualified for the final of the individual round. Heena, a gold medallist in the New Delhi Commonwealth Games, lost in the shoot-off after she was tied with two other shooters for the eighth place with 381 points.
Earlier in the day, Vijay won bronze in the men’s 10 metres air pistol event while the team finished fourth. Vijay scored 680.4 points (579+101.4) to grab the third place.
South Korean Lee Dae-Myung (685.8) won the gold while Chinese Tan Zonglian (684.5) the silver.
In the team event, Vijay (579), Gurpreet Singh (573) and Omkar Singh (568) shot 1,720 to finish fourth. Only Vijay made the cut for the finals at eighth position.
South Korea - Daemyung (585), Jin Jongoh (581) and Lee Sangdo (580) - won the team gold with a total of 1,746 points.
Chinese Zongliang (585), Pu Qifeng (580) and Pang Wei (578) shot 1,743 for the silver. Japan’s Tomoyuki Matsuda (577), Kojiro Horimizu (575) and Susumu Kobayashi (572) totalled 1,724 to grab the bronze.
