New Delhi, Feb 9 (IANS) Manu Bhaker narrowly missed out on a gold as she went down to Vietnam’s Thuy Trang Nguyen in an exciting final of 25m Women’s Pistol that was decided at the end of two shoot-offs in the Asian Rifle/Pistol Championship, which is being held here at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range.

Esha Singh won her second individual medal of the championship, winning bronze. Naamya Kapoor clinched gold in the junior category in another tense shoot-off, while Anjali Bhagwat secured the bronze in the same event as India took their total medal tally to 60 medals, including 37 gold, 13 silver and 10 bronze.

In the finals, Esha Singh started with a perfect five in the first series, while Manu and Thuy Trang hit four. All three shooters were trading the medal positions after each series in the tightly contested finals. The Indians were putting pressure on the Vietnamese shooter, but a perfect five shots in the sixth series saw her take a two-point lead.

Manu and Esha took advantage of Nguyen’s one-shot seventh series to close the gap.

Esha, who was leading with a score of 30 at the end of the eighth series, missed all her shots in the ninth series to eventually be content with the bronze medal. In the last series, Manu hit three shots, while Nguyen hit two shots to end the finals on 35 shots to take the finals to a shoot-off.

In the first shoot-off, both shooters hit two shots each, and in the following shoot-off, Manu missed three shots to miss out on the gold medal.

The third Indian in the final, Rhythm Sangwan, finished in fourth place.

In the junior finals, Naamya Kapoor survived a shoot-off to clinch the gold. The youngest Indian to win a World Championship medal hit 29 shots, the same as Rihadatul Asyifa of Indonesia.

The young shooter held her nerve in the shoot-off, hitting three shots while Asyifa missed all her shots. Anjali Bhagwat won bronze with a score of 24. Parisha Gupta, who qualified for the finals in the top spot, finished in fifth place with a score of 14.

The Indian teams also secured gold in both the senior and junior categories.

–IANS

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