Mohammad Asab bags bronze but misses Games berth

After securing three successive Rio berths on the first three days of the Asia shooting qualifiers, Saturday turned out to be a day of near misses for the Indian shooting contingent at the Karni Singh ranges here.

World no. 7 double trap shooter Mohammad Asab had to settle for a bronze and missed out on a Rio Olympics berth. The promising Akhil Sheoran made it through to the biggest final of his fledging senior career and looked set to grab one of the two Rio quotas available in the men’s 10m air rifle but eventually finished fourth.

In the men’s double trap, Asab and Ankur Mittal qualified for the six-man semi-finals in the top two positions shooting an excellent 142 and 141, respectively.

In the semi-finals, Mittal started off on the wrong foot but Asab looked on course to qualify for the gold medal match-up and bag one of the two quotas available, but a rejected protest and one inexplicable double miss meant that he lost out on the top position by one point finishing on 26.

UAE’s Khaled Alkaabi shot 28 and Fehaid shot 27 to reach the gold medal match-up and claim the two quotas.

In the bronze medal match Asab, who suffered a shoulder injury just before the competition, found his bearings and defeated Korea’s Hyun Woo Shin 26 to 24.

“I tried my best and am very disappointed. I took a painkiller in the morning for my shoulder injury and the effects were starting to wear off,” said a dejected Asab.

In the men’s 10m air rifle, Sheoran shot 620.1 in the qualifying to make the final in eighth place. In the final, Sheoran was in contention for bronze and a quota till his 13th shot (out of 20) when Iran’s Pourya Norouziyan got ahead of him in the next shot and held on.