Tokyo Olympics 2020: Shooter Saurabh Chaudhary enters final

India’s pistol shooter Saurabh Chaudhary finished first in the qualification round to secure a place in the 10m Air Pistol Men’s final event at Tokyo Olympics. Saurabh, the World No. 2, shot 586 in six series to finish among the top 8. His scores read 95, 98, 98, 100, 98, and 97.

Saurabh shot a series of 95 in the first series of men’s 10m pistol qualification. His first 10 shots were: 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9 and after this, he was positioned at the 17th spot.

Saurabh’s second 10 shots added up to 98 and hence he bettered his spot to 9th. In the third series, Saurabh once again put on a cumulative score of 98, and his rank rose further to fifth.

In the fourth series, Saurabh shot a perfect 10 and his rank got better to second, and he was going all guns blazing. In the fifth and sixth, Saurabh shot 98 and 97 and he finished with a total score of 586 to enter the medal round.

Besides leader Saurabh, China’s Zhang Bowen (586-18x), German Reitz (584-21x), Ukraine’s Pavlo Korostylov (581-15x), Foroughi (580-25x), Korea’s Kim Mose (579-20x), Chinese Pang Wei (578-22x) and Mikec (578-21x) have also qualified.

Meanwhile, Abhishek Verma failed to make the cut as he finished 17th with a score of 575.

Abhishek had finished his first series of 10-shots at an accumulated score of 94 and was ranked 24th.

Abhishek’s second series fetched him a score of 96 and his ranking was 21st but he ran the risk of crashing out and not making the medal round. He started his third series with back-to-back 10s and that saw him move up to the 19th position.

In the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth series, Abhishek shot a further 98,97,98, and 92, but this was not enough for him to progress to the medal round.

Earlier on Saturday, both Elavenil Valarivan and Apurvi Chandela failed to qualify for the medal round after finishing 16th and 36th respectively in the women’s 10m air rifle qualification.