Adding two more medals to India’s tally, shooters Manish Narwal and Singhraj Adhana claimed a 1-2 finish in Mixed 50m Pistol SH1 at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics. While Manish bagged the gold medal with a score of 218.2, Singhraj won the silver medal by aggregating a total score of 216.7.
The 19-year-old Narwal, who also holds a world record with a score of 229.1, secured the top podium place by defeating his compatriot Singhraj with a Paralympic Record. In the process, the duo together took India’s tally to 15 at the 2020 Paralympics.
The two shooters had also produced a brilliant show in the qualification, where Manish had amassed 533-7x points while Singhraj had scored 536-4x points after the end of six series. In the qualifying round, Singhraj had finished at the fourth position while Manish had occupied the seventh spot. The two reserved their best for the final, bagging the top two podium spots.
It was Singhraj who started off the final at the top of the charts with scores of 19.4 after 2 shots. Narwal, on the other hand, was only at 17.8 having shot a poor 7.7 in his second attempt.
After 5 shots, the India duo found themselves in the top three, with Singhraj (46.1) ahead of Manish (45.4). The duo struggled to keep their momentum going from there on, with Manish going as low as 6th after 7 shots while Singhraj came down to 3rd.
At the 12-shot mark, Manish regained momentum to find himself at 5th spot while Singhraj was placed third. After shot 14, Singhraj and Manish were placed 4th and 5th, with only 6 shooters left in the competition.
Manish went ahead of Singhraj with shot number 15 but slipped down to 4th spot, with Singhraj at 2nd, after the 18th shot. On the brink of elimination, the duo regained focus and assured themselves of medals after 20th shot.
Chinese shooter Xiagolong Lou and ROC’s Sergey Malyshev, competing with Singhraj and Manish for the top podium, settled for 4th and 3rd places respectively with final shots of 7.5 and 8.5 respectively.
While Singhraj shot 9.4 in his final attempt, Manish shot 9.1 but won the gold medal because of his final total.
