Paris 2024 Olympics: Manu Bhaker finishes fourth in 25m air pistol, misses historic shooting three-peat by a whisker
Ace Indian shooter Manu Bhaker missed a Paris 2024 Olympics medal hat-trick after finishing fourth in the women’s 25m air pistol shooting event at the National Shooting Center in Chateauroux on Saturday.
Despite occupying the top three places for most of the final, a poor series towards the closing stages saw her drop to fourth place after a shoot-off with Veronika Major of Hungary.
Veronika Major won the bronze medal in the final. Jiin Yang of the Republic of Korea took the gold medal after beating France’s Camille Jedrzejewski in a shoot-off.
Despite the way her campaign ended, Manu Bhaker made history aplenty at the Paris 2024 Games.
Earlier, she became the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal in shooting after winning the bronze in the women’s 10m air pistol final. She then won the bronze in the 10m air pistol mixed team event with Sarabjot Singh to clinch India’s first shooting medal in a team event at the Olympics.
On Saturday, Manu began the 25m air pistol shooting final with a solid performance in the first stage. She was tied in second place with 10 points after the first stage along with four other athletes. Jiin Yang took the top spot at the end of the first stage with 13 points to her name.
Bhaker dropped to sixth after the first round of the elimination stage, tied on 13 points with Trinh Thu Vinh of Vietnam.
However, the 22-year-old Indian shooter completed a perfect five in the second series to rise to third along with Jedrzejewski. The duo trailed Jiin Yang and Veronika Major at the top.
Bhaker closed the gap with Jiin Yang down to just a single point with strong shooting in the sixth and seventh series. However, she managed just two points in the following series to drop down and was tied with Veronika Major in the fourth-place elimination round.
In the ensuing shoot-off to decide fourth place, Manu Bhaker missed two targets compared to Veronika Major’s single miss and a historic third Olympic medal at the same Games slipped out from her in cruel fashion.
No Indian has won three individual medals at the Olympics. PV Sindhu, Sushil Kumar and Norman Pritchard (British India) have two each.
On Friday, the 22-year-old Manu Bhaker finished second in the qualifying round to make it to the eight-woman final. She had a qualifying score of 590, which was only bettered by Veronika Major’s 592 with the latter equalling the Olympic qualifying record in this event.
Bhaker was the only athlete from the 21-member Indian shooting team to participate in multiple individual events. She has won two of the three medals in India’s Paris 2024 tally so far - all of which have come from shooting.
Besides Bhaker and Sarabjot, Swapnil Kusale won a bronze medal in men’s 50m rifle three positions.
Bhaker’s fourth-place finish in the women’s 25m pistol final was also the second for India in Paris after Arjun Babuta also suffered the same fate in the men’s 10m air rifle final.
India's skeet shooters, Maheshwari Chauhan, Raiza Dhillon and Anant Jeet Singh Naruka, were also in action on Saturday.
Naruka finished 24th in the men's skeet qualification round with a score of 116 and failed to make it to the final. Only the top six qualified.
After Day 1 of the women's skeet qualifiers, Chauhan is in eighth place with 71 while Dhillon is currently placed 25th in the standings with 66. Heading into the second day of the qualifiers, Nele Wissmer of Germany and Amber Rutter of the USA lead the field with 74.