India hit and miss in Olympics

While the shooters disappoint with their lacklustre performance, Saina, Vijender, Champia and Takhar excel on Day One

There were a few surprises in store on the opening day of competitions at Beijing. Not much was expected from shooters Anjali Bhagwat, Samresh Jung and Avneet Kaur Sidhu in the events today and not much happened. All three failed to qualify for the medal round.

Manavjit Sandhu had said that he hopes he can strike form during the Games and he did not give much hope of that in the beginning, missing two clay birds out of 25 in his opening round of the trap event. Instead, it was Mansher Singh who looked to be on song exploding all 25 of his targets into plumes of fluorescent green that the clay here sprouts when smashed.

Mansher missed just one more in the next round to the two of the other Indian to continue to look solid. But as the pressure built up, the nerves began to show. Sandhu nailed 24 and Mansher 20 in the final round to register scores of 70 and 69 respectively. Four shooters have 70 while eight rest on 69 to make qualifying for the final an even more strenuous test of mettle on the morrow.

Jung finished at 42 while Bhagwat, who is more of a contender in the 50m Rifle 3 event, placed 29 ahead of Sidhu’s 39.

Another failing to meet the grade was swimmer Sandeep Sejwal, who came in second in his men’s 100m breaststroke heat but was unable to time good enough to make the semifinals.

Saina Nehwal took just 29 minutes to decimate Russian Ella Karachkova in women’s badminton singles 21-9 21-8. Bajranglal Takhar rowed into the quarterfinals of the men’s singles sculls coming third in a field of five while boxer Vijender Kumar made use of his good draw to step smartly into the next round in his 75kg bout beating Gambia’s Jack Badou. Dinesh Kumar however faltered in the 81kg to Abdelhafid Benchabla of Algeria.