The Indian shooting duo of Maheshwari Chauhan and Anant Jeet Singh Naruka fought tooth and nail before missing out on a bronze medal by a whisker in the skeet mixed team event, finishing fourth at the Paris Olympics here on Monday.
Maheshwari and Naruka shot 43 to finish fourth behind China’s Yiting Jiang and Jianlin Lyu (44) in a thrilling match for the bronze medal.
Earlier, the Indians finished fourth in the qualification after both teams were tied on 146 at the end of the three-round, 150-shot process, forcing a shoot-off.
In the qualification, Maheshwari shone with 50/50 in her final two rounds while Naruka notched scores of 25, 23 and 24 in the three rounds.
What swung the match in China’s favour was the incredible form of Lyu, who did not miss a single shot on the way to the podium, even as his partner Jiang recovered after a rare three straight misses to help the pair to victory.
At the start of the medal round, China’s Lyu and Jiang earned perfect scores of 4/4 against India.
In reply, India’s Naruka missed out on one of the four targets (3/4) in the first station. Chauhan shot a score of 4/4 to get off to a good start.
Trailing China (8/8) after the first station, India (7/8) fought back in station two and restored parity heading
into the third station. What helped the Indians at this stage was the three successive misses by Jiang.
Even as Lyu continued with his flawless shooting, Jiang missed one but then got his act together to finish on a strong note.
In order to win a bronze, India were left with the task to hit all eight targets while hoping that China would miss a few. Naruka and Chauhan fired all four targets in the
decider, but Lyu and Jiang kept their nerves and succeeded in all their attempts to edge out the Indians by just one point.
The Italian team of Gabriele Rosetti and Diana Bacosi edged the United States 45-44 in the final of the mixed team skeet competition to win gold. The US were represented
by Vincent Hancock and Austen Smith.