New Delhi: Double Olympic medallist Manu Bhaker won the silver after going down in a double shoot-off to Vietnam’s Nguyen Thuy Trang while Esha Singh won bronze in the 25m pistol discipline at the Asian Championships here on Monday.
The final was a tense, topsy-turvy affair with the lead switching hands multiple times but Trang held on in the shoot off to clinch gold.
Manu, who was third after the fourth series, worked her way to the second spot after the fifth sequence but slipped to third in the sixth even as Trang hit all five. The Indian produced a perfect series of her own in the very next try to move on top but the Vietnamese remained hot on her trail.
Going into the final five-shot series, Manu trailed Trang by a point. The Indian hit three shots to Trang’s two to level the scores at 35 and force a shoot-off where both hit twice. That necessitated another shoot-off where Manu hit twice again and the Vietnamese secured three hits and a top finish.
Shooting with her new pistol, Manu said she is still getting used to the grip pressure and recoil. “It was an up-and-down final. I had a little problem in the beginning. It got a little better in the middle phase but I struggled towards the end,” the 23-year-old said.
“I didn’t really have much in my mind (in the shoot-off). I was trying to calm myself down. I was just constantly talking to myself about what I have to do,” she added.
Manu, whose lone international success last year was a second place at the Lima World Cup, has been working her way to form through a commendable show at the twin national trials. She currently occupies the second spot on the national rankings in both the pistol events as she builds for the Asian Games and World Championships later this year.
Manu, who missed out on a medal in the 10m event in this tournament, said the setback didn’t affect her coming into this match.
“I have been shooting in the two disciplines since 2017-18, so I know to dissociate one result from the other. I don’t feel low or strange if one match is not good. It doesn’t really bother me that much because I know that there is another match. And even if I get a gold in this, that’s not going to help me in that.”
Compatriot Esha Singh, who won a gold in the 10m event, was briefly in line for another top finish before slipping up. Esha led the field after 40 shots (eight series) but endured a horror ninth series where she couldn’t nail a single hit and bowed out in third place. Rhythm Sangwan, the third Indian in the eight-woman final, was fourth (27).
“It was a tough one and it has given me a lot of lessons. I don’t know what happened there (9th series) as all my shots kept going to the right of the target,” Esha said.
The trio of Esha, Manu and Rhythm also secured the women’s 25m pistol team gold for India with a cumulative score of 1751. Chinese Taipei and Vietnam finished with the silver and bronze, respectively.