Ayonika Paul lands Rio Games berth

Ayonika Paul took the silver medal in the women’s 10m air rifle event at the Asia Olympic shooting qualifiers at the Karni ranges here on Friday to ensure India a 11th Rio Olympics quota berth to match the feat achieved ahead of the London Games.

And with four days to go, the squad look set to go one better in Rio as far as quota berths are concerned. India came away with two medals from the ranges in London.

With two quota berths available in the women’s 10m air rifle event, India were eligible for one seat as Apurvi Chandela had already secured her quota in earlier competitions. After the 40-shot qualifying round, Ayonika had 416.6 to be placed third and Pooja Ghatkar was sixth with 415.6.

Both entered the eight-strong final round and were in contention for the two top spots till the 18th shot when Pooja shot a surprise 8.8 to be relegated to the bronze medal position. Iran’s Najmeh Khidmati, who is a world number 10 and already had a quota secured in the event, caught up with Ayonika on the 20th shot and both tied at 205.9 to go into a shoot-off for gold. Ayonika shot a disappointing 9.9 in the shoot-off to Khidmati’s 10.1 for silver. The other quota seat in the event went to Korea’s Eunseo Lee who finished fourth in the finals.

Elated at her feat, Ayonika said, “The last two shots are still ringing in my mind. I was here to win gold but the Iranian finished strongly. I will start training again from tomorrow morning itself to ensure I improve on my first and last shots. I am happy at having won the quota but disappointed at losing out on the gold.”

In the men’s 50m pistol, Japan’s former world champion and world number 6 Tomoyuki Matsuda won gold beating North Koreans Song Guk Kim. Both the Rio quotas in the event though were claimed by North Korea as Matsuda was already through.

Omkar Singh finished fourth in an event where India had already filled their quotas through Jitu Rai and Prakash Nanjappa.