Abhinav Bindra Finishes Fourth in Men’s 10M Air Rifle

New Delhi, August 08, 2016: Former Olympic Champion AbhinavBindra, today missed out on his second Olympic medal after he bowed out in a shoot-off for the Bronze Medal on Day Three of the Shooting Competition of the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games at the Olympic Shooting Centre located in Rio de Janerio’sDeodoro Park cluster. Italian NiccoloCampriani of Italy won the Gold, his second Olympic Gold, while SerhiyKulish of Ukraine won Silver and Vladimir Maslenikkov of Russia won the Bronze.

Earlier, Abhinav looked to be pacing himself perfectly for a shot at the medal when he sailed through his qualifying round in seventh position with a score of 625.7. Bindra who started strongly going up to as high as second position during the first third of the 60 shots rally. He lost ground in the middle going down to 12th at times before rallying brilliantlyto finish seventh and comfortably qualify.

At the first elimination stage of 8 shots of the 20 shot final, Abhinav lay 4th with a score of 81.2. A brilliant series of high-10s saw him go up to second after 11 shots and third after 12. He maintained the position till the 14th shot but a couple of high 9s saw him tied at fourth with the UkranianSerhiy after the 16th shot. In the shoot-off that followed, ABhinav could manage only a 10.0 while the Ukranian shot a brilliant 10.5 to move ahead, thus relegating AbhinavBindra into fourth place.

In the Men’s Trap, Manavjit Singh Sandhu raised hopes of a possible qualification into the semi-final rounds with a 25 to follow up his 68 yesterday. Another round of 25 would have put him into a shoot-off, but a 22 in the final series of 25 shots in the five series qualification meant that he would have to be satisfied with a 15th position finish. Teammate KynanChenai shot a 114 to end in 19th spot.