PUNE: Shiva Narwal, along with his teammate Esha Singh won gold in the 10m air pistol mixed event at the ISSF World Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Friday.
However, Shiva had a hint of disappointment in his voice even while accepting congratulatory messages. The Haryana shooter, 17, was happy about his gold but more than that he still couldn’t get over the disappointment of missing the chance of winning a quota in the individual event on Thursday.
Shiva had shot 579 only to finish 17th in the men’s 10m air pistol event. The event offered four quota places for the Paris Olympics.
“I didn’t shoot well at all. I don’t think that was because of the pressure. It was a good chance (to win a quota),” Shiva told TOI after his mixed gold. “The mixed gold is good, it is an Olympic event too but unfortunately there are no quotas for it here,” he said. Shiva didn’t want to make excuses for his performance, however, the shooter said he had recently recovered from conjunctivitis and was trying to adjust to the light at the range.
“I got conjunctivitis after our camp in Paris (July last week). I took a break of a week and resumed the camp in Delhi before the Worlds. The flu is gone but I am still taking time to adjust my eyes to the bright target lights. I don’t want to make it sound like an excuse, but it did affect me,” Shiva said.
The duo of Shiva (293) and Esha (290) jointly scored 583 to top the qualification round and qualify for the gold medal match, along with second placed pair of Sevval Tarhan and Yusuf Dikec of Turkey.
In the gold medal match, the Indian dominated the match and reached 16 points when the Turkish duo had 10 on their board.
The bronze went to the Chinese duo of Bowen Zhang and Ranxin Jiang as they beat Iran's team of Haniyeh Rostamiyan and Sajad Poorhosseini 17-7.
Another Indian pair of TS Divya (286) and Sarabjot Singh (288) could score only joint 574 and finish 22nd in the qualification round.
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