Changwon [South Korea], October 28 (ANI): Indian shooter Manu Bhaker secured a Paris 2024 Olympic quota for India after she finished fifth in the women’s 25m pistol event at the Asian Shooting Championships 2023 in Changwon.
QUOTA!! It’s an 11th @Paris2024 quota place for #IndianShooting as @realmanubhaker takes 5th place in the Women’s 25m Pistol at the 15th @Asian_Shooting championship in #Changwon 🇰🇷 Congratulations!🎉🔥🇮🇳#ShootingStar #Nishanebaaz #TeamIndia #Shooting #India pic.twitter.com/NVJ4aOy8y0
— NRAI (@OfficialNRAI) October 28, 2023
Tokyo Olympian Bhaker qualified for the final with a score of 591 but could only achieve 24 in the medal round, finishing behind the People’s Republic of China’s Liu Rui (37), Iran’s Rostamiyan Haniyeh (36) and China’s Zhao Nan (32) and Feng Sixuan (27).
The Asian Shooting Championships 2023 are a qualifying event for the Olympics in Paris in 2024. There are 24 Olympic quotas available, with the best two finishers (one from each country) in each of the 12 Olympic shooting events receiving a spot for their national teams.
China, which had previously won one quota berth in this event, claimed its second spot on Friday, with Liu Rui topping the podium. Each country can only win two quota spots in a single event.
Rostamiyan Haniyeh of Iran had already acquired a Paris 2024 slot from last year’s Cairo World Championships, therefore the second quota spot on offer in Changwon was automatically passed on to Manu Bhaker despite her fifth-place performance.
This was India’s 11th quota for the 2024 Olympics in Paris. Manu Bhaker, Mehuli Ghosh, Sift Kaur Samra, Rajeshwari Kumari, and Tilottama Sen are five of these. Tilottama Sen earned a quota after taking silver in the women’s 10m air rifle event on Friday in Changwon.
Arjun Babuta (men’s 10m air rifle) and Sarabjot Singh (men’s 10m air pistol) have also secured Paris 2024 quotas from the Changwon meet.
Meanwhile, Divyansh Singh Panwar and Ramita of India won silver in the 10m air rifle mixed team event. The pair won qualifying with a score of 631.1 to advance to the gold medal match, where they were defeated 16-12 by the Chinese combination of Han Jiayu and Yu Haonan. (ANI)
