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Forget the sheen, even the golds are threatening to disappear with one magical name missing from India's Asian Games shooting roster. Life on the pistol range for Indians, after Jaspal Rana left hasn't been the smoothest, though Samresh Jung seemed to take over the baton last Commonwealth Games, but the Koreans and Chinese not to mention the fast-improving Kazakhs have made India's three gold medals from pistol at Doha a distant oasis of a memory here.
Armyman Vijay Kumar briefly tugged at recollection, when he stayed second on the scores till his fifth series, snapping at the heels of a rampaging Korean, but a poor final series of 93 pushed him down to 8th, raising doubts of a medal in 10m air pistol. However, shooting a stupendous final score of 101.3 that speaks tomes of his mental toughness, the seasoned marksman came right back into contention to snatch a bronze.
Better still for India this isn't the shooter's prime event, and he is still scheduled to compete in his favourite Rapid and Centrefire.
"He started that one series poorly with 8 and had four shots of 9 that brought him down, but he was very strong in the finals," coach Sunny Thomas, said about the final's highest score at the event, that catapulted Vijay Kumar from 8 to third position.
Women shooters Heena Sidhu, Annu Raj Singh and Sonia Rai won the silver medal in the 10m Air Pistol team event. The Indian trio combined to shoot 1140, a point adrift of the gold medallist Korean troika of Yunmi Gim, Byunghee Kim and Lim Ho Lee here.
Chinese shooters Qi Sun, Jun Wen Guo and Ling Su Yu settled for the bronze medal with a score of 1139.
Heena shot a score of 381, while Annu and Sonia managed scores of 380 and 379 respectively to help India win its third silver in shooting.
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