Shooters Jitu, Nanjappa fail in 50m Pistol qualifiers at Rio

Rio de Janeiro, Aug 10 (IANS) Shooter Jitu Rai's campaign at the Rio Olympics ended on a disappointing note on Wednesday when he finished 12th to miss qualifying for the finals of the 50 metre Pistol Men's event at the Olympic Shooting centre here.

Another Indian shooter Prakash Nanjappa also finished a lowly 25th to crash out of the quadrennial extravaganza.

Jitu consistently managed to hit the bull's eye on nine occasions in what is considered as his pet event and his cumulative scores after the six series qualification round read 92, 95, 90, 94, 95 and 88 to total 554.

But a poor sixth series cost him the berth to the finals while Nanjappa never really looked in the hunt with a score of 547 to bow out of the event.

Jitu started the first series at the second spot with a perfect 10 and then went on to fire 37 from four rounds to find himself at the 11th spot. The army marksman then picked himself up in the final rounds to get to a cumulative score of 92.

Jitu bounced back in the second series with three consecutive 10s to rise to the fifth spot and take his cumulative score to 95.

His third series started with a perfect 10 followed by two 9s. But a six off the fourth shot saw him drop him to 12th only to quickly recover to seventh with two perfect 10s and take his total to 90.

Jitu retained his seventh spot in the fourth series totalling 94 and then kept rising to the fifth spot in the fifth series with a cumulative score of 95.

But a nightmarish start to the sixth series saw him scoring 26 in three shots. He followed up his first three shots with a 10 to climb up to fourth spot only to slip to 7seventh after a paltry 8 from his seventh shot.

A terrible 7 in the next shot dipped him further to 12th to end his campaign.

Earlier on Saturday, Jitu had earlier made it to the finals of the men's 10m Air Pistol event but could not get into medal contention.

On the other hand, Nanjappa struggled to find his feet with some poor shots on Wednesday. He finished at the 41st spot after the first series with a score of 85.

In the subsequent series, despite managing 10 perfect 10 scores, the shooter's scores read 90, 91, 93, 95 and 93 after the final round of qualification landing him at the 25th position.

World record holder and South Korean Jongoh Jin topped the qualifications with cumulative score of 567 followed by China's Wei Pang with 566 and another South Korean Seungwoo Han with 562 points at second and third spots, respectively.