India’s hopes of winning a medal from the sport of shooting at the Rio Paralympic Games in Brazil were dealt a huge blow as their lone shooter, Naresh Kumar Sharma, bowed out in the qualifying round of the Men’s R7-50m Rifle 3 Positions event with a last placed finish as he could only accumulate 1085 points at the Olympic Shooting Centre in Deodoro.
Sharma started the event by scoring a 9 pointer in his first shot in the kneeling stage as he went on to accumulate 95 points from the first series. The shooter occupied the 14th spot and a better execution was then needed by the Indian in his next three series of the kneeling stage if he had wanted to have a go at the finals.
The second series saw the 44-year old collect only 93 points as he slipped to the 16th position in the table which was not good enough for the shooter as the leader at that time, Korea’s Suwan Kim had shot an impressive 99 in both the series.
It looked like Sharma was going to end his Paralympic campaign on a disappointing note as he struggled to find his form. The 44-year old shooter went on to score 95 points in his third series as he could not improve his scoring pattern. The shooter maintained his 16th rank in the table out of the total 22 shooters and things looked unfavourable for the Indian as he moved into his fourth series of the kneeling stage.
The 44-year old shot only 94 points from his fourth and last series of the kneeling stage as he finished the round at the 17th spot, just five places from the bottom. The shooters progressed to the prone stage where the shooters were required to shoot another four series of 10 shots and the Indian started the stage by scoring 95 points in his first series which saw him drop to the second-last position in the table.
Such is the pressure of participating at the Paralympics, that even the most experienced players cannot manage to perform well. The Indian suffered from the same scenario as even in his fifth Paralympic Games, he could not settle himself properly as he failed to give a fight to his competitors. The Indian shot an improved 96 points in his second series of the prone stage which saw him maintain his place at 21st. However, another 95 points in his third series saw the shooter improve his position as he climbed to 19th in the table.
The last series of the prone stage saw Sharma obtain a tally of 95 points which took him to the 16th spot in the table. It was then the time for the standing stage where the 44-year old needed to hit as many bullseyes as possible if he wanted to qualify for the finals of the event. The Indian started the standing stage by accumulating a disappointing 80 points in his first series as he fell to the last spot in the table.
The disappointment for the Indian continued as he could only manage 86, 80 and 81 points in the last three series respectively. It meant that Sharma ends his journey at the Rio Paralympics with a last placed finish as he accumulated only 1085 points out of a possible 1200. The top 8 contestants progress to the final round:
Suyash Narayan Jadhav also disappoints in swimming
It was always going to a tough ask for the Indian if he wanted to progress to the finals of the Men’s 50m Butterfly -S7 event at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. The 22-year old swimmer was placed in Heat 1 of the event where he was up against the likes of Australia’s Matthew Levy and Ukraine’s Ievgenii Bogodaiko in a tough qualifer.
The top 8 athletes from the qualifying stage were supposed to progress to the finals. There were a total of 13 athletes who participated in the qualifying stage, as Heat 1 consisted of six swimmers and Heat 2 consisted of seven.
India’s Suyash Jadhav could not prove to be fast enough as he sinked to the 5th spot in his heat with a timing of 33.63 seconds which was way behind the leader, Bogodaiko’s timing of 30.74 seconds. The disappointing timing for the young swimmer meant that he was unable to finish inside the top-8 fastest swimmers from both the Heats combined as he finished at the 9th spot yet again.
Here is a complete list of how the event panned out:
