Paris (France): Indian shooters Ramita Jindal and Arjun Babuta have been eliminated from the 10m air rifle mixed team event of the ongoing Paris Olympics 2024 here on Saturday.
Ramita and Arjun failed to make a cut for the medal matches as they finished sixth with a total score of 628.7 in the qualification stage of the event. The other Indian shooters pair Elavenil Valarivan and Sandeep Singh ended at 12th place with an aggregate score of 626.3.
Babuta enjoyed a fine start in the second relay and had a sequence that read 10.5, 10.6, 10.5, 10.9, while Ramita managed 10.2, 10.7, 10.3, 10.1 in the second series, their effort taking the team into the top 8. The duo of Ramita and Arjun Babuta smelled the success, but failed to taste it. The duo was placed fifth with three shots remaining but fell 1.0 point short of the medal round cut-off. But, to get into the bronze medal round, they needed to finish in the top four which they eventually couldn't achieve.
The People’s Republic of China’s Huang Yuting and Sheng Lihao, the reigning world champions in the event, topped the qualifiers with a score of 632.2 to set up a gold medal match against the Republic of Korea’s Keum Jihyeon and Hajun Park, who tallied 631.4.
Third-placed Kazakhstan duo Alexandra Le and Islam Satpayev (630.8) while the German team of Anna Janssen and Maximilian Ulbrich (629.7) finished fourth. However, the German duo faltered in the bronze medal match later conceding a medal to Kazakhstan the first bronze medal of the ongoing edition.
China has won the first gold medal of the Paris Olympics. Huang Yuting and Sheng Lihao shot for gold in the 10-meter air rifle mixed team event held Saturday as they beat the Korean pair by 16-12.
