Gold Coast
Heena Sidhu, who earlier bagged silver medal in the women’s 10m Air Pistol event at CWG 2018 earlier, got her act straight and won the gold in 25m pistol event. This was the third gold medal from the Indian shooting contingent as Manu Bhaker, Jitu Rai and Sidhu have stood atop of the podium.
It was looking like it would be a dull Day 6 of the 21st Commonwealth Games for India but Heena Sidhu made sure that there is something to cheer about. The ace shooter, who bagged silver medal in the women’s 10m Air Pistol event at CWG 2018 earlier, got her act straight and won the gold in 25m pistol event. This was the third gold medal from the Indian shooting contingent as Manu Bhaker, Jitu Rai and Sidhu have stood atop of the podium. In total, Indian marksmen have bagged eight medals so far in CWG 2018, with 3 gold, 2 silver and 3 bronze.
In the women’s 25m pistol event, Sidhu’s compatriot Annu Singh finished at the 6th spot. The two had qualified for the final after Annu finished the at the second spot with a total of 584 points while Heena came third with 579. Her tally of 38 points in the final is also a Games record. Twitterati came alive as soon as she bagged the gold medal.
In the qualification rounds, Annu had taken pole position at the end of the Precision round with 293. She managed 291 in the Rapid. She registered the scores of 96, 99 and 98 in the Precision round and 98, 96 and 97 in rapids. Heena, meanwhile, struggled a bit with her disappointing efforts of 95 and 93 before recovering somewhat with a 98 in the third. She also started poorly in Rapid as she could only manage a 95 in her opening attempt. She then bounced back by firing consecutive scores of 99 to zoom to the third spot.
In 2017, Sidhu won gold medal in women’s 10-meter air pistol event at the Commonwealth shooting championships in Brisbane. In 2016, Sidhu had qualified for the 2016 Rio Olympics in the women’s 10-metre air pistol and the women’s 25-metre pistol events. There she finished fourteenth and twentieth, respectively.
The result takes India’s overall tally to 20 medals, with 11 Gold, 4 silver and 5 bronze.
