India’s hopes of winning a medal from the sport of shooting at the Rio Paralympic Games was dealt a huge blow as the lone Indian shooter participating, Naresh Kumar Sharma, was knocked out in the qualification stage of the mixed 10m air rifle prone event held at the Olympic Shooting Centre in Deodoro. Sharma finished the event at the 44th spot as he only managed a total of 606.5 points from the qualifying round.
The Indian started the round by scoring only 100.6 points from his first of the four series in the event. The 44-year old, hence, saw himself lagging at the 44th spot in a competition that consisted of a total of 45 athletes. Sharma could not improve on his performance in his second series as well as he shot 101.9 points that got his total up to 202.5 points at the completion of the first two series.
With two more series of 10 shots remaining for the Indian, it was time for him to pull up his socks in order to have a realistic chance of qualifying for the final round of the event. However, Sharma seemed to be lacking that killer touch in his game as he could only manage a meagre 98.6 points from his third series of the event. This poor showing from the 44-year old shooter took him to the 45th and last position in the points table.
It was already evident that the Indian would not be able to qualify for the final round even with three more rounds to go. The Indian shot another 101.4 points from his fourth series which saw him get to the 44th spot but signs looked ominous for the shooter who was participating in his fifth Paralympic Games. The fifth series saw Sharma shoot a total of 102.9 points as he finished the event with 101.1 points in his sixth series to finish at a disappointing second-last place.
Whereas, it was Slovakia’s Veronika Vadovicova who lead the scoring charts since the start of the event as she finished at the top spot with a tally of 636.7 points.
Here is the list of athletes who have qualified for the final round of the mixed 10m air rifle prone event:
Veronika Vadovicova (Slovakia) – 636.7 points
Cuiping Zhang (China) – 634.7 points
Jin Ho Park (Korea) – 634.6 points
Jangho Lee (Korea) – 634.4 points
Natascha Hiltrop (Germany) – 634.3 points
Radoslov Malenovskey (Slovakia) – 633.5 points
Gregory Reid (New Zealand) – 632.5 points
Iurii Stoiev (Ukraine) – 632.5 points
