Hee qualifies for Rio

New Delhi, Jan 27: Joint world record holder Hee Sidhu won gold in the women’s 10m Air Pistol event on the opening day of the Asian qualifiers at the Karni Singh Shooting Range here on Wednesday to book a ticket to the Rio Olympics.

Given the expectations and pressures of performing in front of her home crowd, Hee’s was a clinical performance and she topped her qualifying round as well with a creditable score of 387.

In the fils, she finished with 199.4 to beat Chinese Tapiei’s Tien Chia Chen (198.1) who took the silver. Yun Mi Gim of South Korea got the bronze. The second Olympic quota went to Iran’s Golnoush Sebghatollahi who finished fourth. But the fact that both Chinese Taipei and Korea had exhausted their quotas in the event worked to her advantage.

What made Hee’s performance even better was the fact that this was her third intertiol gold in five months. The former world number one had won the same event at the 8th Asian Air Gun Championships here in September.

In the two other events of the day, India’s Vijay Kumar was lying seventh after stage one of the men’s Rapid Fire Pistol event with a score of 285. Neeraj Kumar shot 279 to lie 13th and Harpreet Singh logged a score of 278 to be at the 16th position. The second stage and the fils of the event are scheduled for Thursday.

In the first stage of the men’s Trap event, India’s quota hope Mavjit Singh Sandhu had an ordiry day by his standards, shooting 23 and 22 out of a possible 50 to lie in the 26th position. However, there are 75 more shots to go and four quotas up for grabs in the event, so he can be expected to catch up on the second day. (IANS)