Army sharp shooter, Vijay Kumar, fought a nerve—wracking battle with five other top marksmen to clinch the silver medal in the men’s 25m Rapid Fire Pistol event at the Olympic Games here on Friday.
Kumar beat back the challenge of world champion Alexei Klimov of Russia, Chinese duo of Ding Feng and Zhang Jian and German Christian Reitz in the 40—shot final to finish runner—up in a thrilling finale behind Cuba’s Leuris Pupo who shot his way to the gold with a world record equalling score of 34.
The 26—year—old army subedar from Himachal Pradesh found the target 30 times out of 40 attempts in the series comprising eight rounds of five shots each.
This is India’s second medal in the ongoing quadrennial extravaganza after fellow marksman Gagan Narang’s bronze in the 10m Air Rifle event on July 30. This was also the country’s fourth medal in shooting in Olympic history.
The other medal winners are Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore (silver in 2004 Athens), Abhinav Bindra (gold in 2008 Beijing) besides Narang.
Kumar started with a bang, hitting the target all five times and kept himself in the hunt for a medal by consistently finding the target.
After a perfect five out of five at the start, Kumar, a double gold medallist in the 2010 Commonwealth Games, found the target four times in the second and third series, but missed it twice in the fourth.
He came back strongly by finding the target four times in the next three rounds and assured himself of a silver. In the last round after Pupo shot four to clinch the gold, Kumar seemed to relax a bit and missed three targets.
The bronze medal was won by Feng with a tally of 27.
Comments:
Jokes aside- Seriously- if ever India want to win Gold medals and bring Glory to India , only and only way is to hand over entire sports games dept to the military and support them with 100% budget. Doctors, dietitians, nutritionists, coaches both from local and overseas esxperts. Form a core team with all ex- and present participants ho can guide. Hand pich little skilled-talented with attitude and aptitude from nook and corner of India -from the grassroots level .take them with their parents -isolate the kids with only exercise and training -cut them off from the media and hype world . Launch them as surprise only on the Olympic day.Children should be put in the milling machine and shaped -groomed only with through training-professional training of mind -body and spirit. This can only be done by the military and not jokers like kalmadi co. Look at china -where they reached in every aspect of life . 50yrs ahead.
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