Rio de Janeiro:
India's Deepak Kumar was left to rue a poor start after finishing seventh to miss out on an Olympic quota in the men's 10m air rifle event of the World Cup in Rio de Janiero on Friday. Needing to finish above any one of two competitors to secure India's ninth Tokyo Olympic quota place, Deepak could not make the cut after making the finals. Earlier, Deepak had bagged the eighth and final qualifying spot with a brilliant finish at the end, which gave him a score of 627.9 after 60 qualifying shots.
Five of the eight finalists could not claim quotas and Deepak had to finish above either Australian Dane Sampson or Slovakian Patrik Jany to claim one of the two available Tokyo berths. He was poorest off the blocks though, beginning with a couple of 9.7 and 9.2s, which eventually cost him the quota as even after shooting nothing below 10.0 in his next 12 shots, he was eliminated.
Jany eventually won the bronze and Sampson finished fourth to secure the quotas even as the gold went to Yu Haonan of China who broke both the senior and junior world records with a stunning 252.8 finish.
Petar Gorsa of Croatia added a silver to go with his gold in the men's rifle 3 positions on Thursday. Young Yash Vardhan shot 627.7 to miss out on a finals spot by 0.2 by finishing ninth, while debutant Kiran Ankush Jadhav shot 627.5 to finish 11th overall in the 88-strong field qualifications. With two gold, one silver and a bronze, India tops the medals tally with five more finals to go.
