Asian Games: Arjun Cheema, Sarabjot Singh, Shiva Narwa win gold in 10m Air Pistol Shooting

Indian trio- Arjun Cheema, Sarabjot Singh & Shiva Narwa - has won a gold medal in the 10m air pistol event shooting, at the Asian Games in China's Hangzhou. They beat China only with a single point and scripted a historic moment.

Hangzhou(China):The men's 10m air pistol team continued India's success story at the Asian Games here, winning gold with two marksmen also making it to the individual finals on Thursday.

The trio of Sarabjot Singh, Arjun Singh Cheema, and Shiva Narwal narrowly beat the Chinese team in an intense competition to emerge as winners and ensure India its fourth gold medal from the shooting ranges.

Indian shooters have been just unstoppable in the ongoing edition of the Asian Games and have accounted for four gold, four silver and five bronze medals so far.

The Indian contingent finished with an aggregate score of 1734 beating the Chinese team with a close margin of a single point. Vietnam settled for the bronze medal with a score of 1730.

A clinical team effort also paid rich dividends for two of the three shooters. Sarabjot and Arjun scored 580 and 578 points respectively finishing at the fifth and eighth spots respectively to qualify for the individual final where they finished fourth and eighth, respectively.

Vietnam's Pham Quang Huy has won gold with a score of 240.5 followed by South Korea's Lee Wonho (239.4) who took the silver while the bronze went to Uzbekistan's Vladimir Svechnikov (219.9) .

The 21-year-old Sarabjot finished fourth, scoring 199. Arjun ended up eighth in the final eight round. He exited on the second elimination shot.

TEAM GOLD FOR INDIA- The Indian shooters finished in the top with Sarabjot, who will be celebrating his 22nd birthday on Saturday, giving himself an early birthday gift. He led the air pistol trio scoring 580 in the qualification round, while Cheema shot 578 and Narwal amassed 576, all three aggregating to 1734.

The team medallists are decided based on the aggregate scores from the qualification round. Sarabjot shot cards of 95, 95, 97, 98, 97 and 98 to aggregate 580 and entered the finals at fifth place.

His team-mate Arjun Cheema shot series of 97, 96, 97, 97, 96 and 95 for his 578, making it to the eight-shooter finals, where he was placed at the eight entrant.

Shiva Narwal, the younger brother of 2020 Tokyo Paralympic gold medallist in mixed 50m pistol Manish, came out of his elder sibling's shadow as the third member of the gold-winning team here, but he could not make it to the individual finals, finishing 14th.

Narwal shot series of 92, 96, 97, 99, 97 and 95 for his 576.

This was the third team gold at the shooting ranges here after the 10m air rifle top-podium finish and women's 25-metre pistol gold.

INDIVIDUAL MEDAL MISSED- Sarabjot had won his first individual senior gold medal at the ISSF World Cup in Bhopal earlier this year, and was gunning for more success today in the individual category after being placed fifth among the eight finalists at the end of the qualification round.

But a string of below-par scores in the finals, undid his efforts in the qualification round. He managed just 9.8 and 9.4 on the third and fourth shots in the finals and another rank bad shot of 8.9 on the seventh shot pegged him further back from where he could not recover.

Sarabjot, whose success story started in 2021 when he won the junior air pistol team and mixed team gold at the ISSF World Championships at Lima, Peru in 2021, has been performing consistently ever since, bagging the mixed team gold at the recently-concluded World Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan.

He would now be aiming to seal a 2024 Paris Olympics quota place at the Asian Championships in Changwon (South Korea) later this year. (with PTI inputs)