India’s pistol queen Heena Sidhu was in no mood today to miss the last chance to win a ticket to Rio Olympics.
The 26-year-old showed nerves of steel by winning gold and a quota for India in Women’s 10m Air Pistol at the Asian Olympic Qualifying Competition for shooting in New Delhi.
Heena shot 387 to top the qualification round. After the first three shots in the finals, she was pushed to the second position but bounced back quickly to take the lead after the 6th shot and maintained it till the very end to claim the gold and quota with a margin of 1.3 points ahead of Tien Chia Chen (TPE). The bronze was won by Korea’s Gim Yun Mi (177.9).
Out of eight finalist, four were either already qualified for Rio or their countries had reached the maximum limit of two quotas in the event. For Heena, the competition was with two Irani shooters, Sebghatollahi Golnoush and Elham Harijani along with Singapore’s The Xiu Hong. While Golnoush finished fourth with the quota, Hong and Harijani were eliminated earlier in the final.
Heena and her husband and coach Ronak Pandit both looked happy and relieved on winning the quota finally and Heena can now focus on her Olympic preparation.
Speaking to indianshooting.com, Heena said, “I am happy to have finally got the quota. Now I can peacefully prepare for Rio and we already have a plan in place. I won’t burn myself too much and focus more on quality training.
U wanna know how I feel. I feel EXHAUSTED. And this feels Normal, the alternate of not winning wud have shown that m doing smth really wrong
— Heena sidhu (@HeenaSidhu10) January 27, 2016
This was Heena’s third consecutive gold since September last year. She had won gold at the Asian Airgun Championship at the same venue followed with another gold medal wining performance at the Asian Shooting Championship in Kuwait.
“We are both happy and relieved with today’s performance. We have been working hard and kept mising quota narrowly so we were always very close. we made some changes to our approach and it has worked well for us” said, Ronak Pandit.
The Results:
Women’s 10m Air Pistol: 1. Heena Sidhu 199.4 (387); 2. Chie Chen Tien (TPE) 198.1 (382); 3.Gim Yun Mi (KOR) 177.9 (381); 11. Yashaswini Deswal 378; 12. Shweta Singh 378. MQS: P Shri Nivetha 378; Malaika Goel 377.
Men’s 50m Rifle Prone: 1. Kim Jonghyun (KOR) 206.3 (625.1); 2. Attapon Vea Aree (THA) 206.1 (623.4); 3. Kim Hyeonjun (KOR) 185.2 (624.4); 14. Swapnil Kusale 617.2; 17. Sushil Ghalay 616.6; 24. Surendra Sinh Rathod 615.9. MQS: Chain Singh 622.9; Sanjeev Rajput 618.3.