Gagan Narang wins third title to finish Pune shooting championships

Top marksman Gagan Narang signed off from the Balewadi ranges in Pune on Tuesday by bagging his third gold medal in the 50m rifle three position event in the Kumar Surendra Singh Memorial Shooting Championships.

The Hyderabad ace shot down his hat-trick of rifle crowns with a total score of 1269 (1172 in the preliminaries followed up by 97.0 in the finals), edging out silver medalist Chain Singh of Army who tallied 1251.1 (1154+97.1).

Navy's experienced shooter Sanjeev Rajput came third with 1250.1 (1153+97.1).

Air India's Narang, among the country's best bets for a medal at next year's London Olympics, had earlier captured the 10m air rifle and 50m prone titles.

Vijay Kumar bagged the standard pistol gold with a score of 577 and also helped the army competitors to claim the team gold with an overall aggregate of 1690. CK Chaudhary and Gurpreet Singh were his teammates.

Kumar won the 10m air pistol team gold earlier with Om Prakash and Jitu Rai as companions.

Mahaveer Singh of MP (574) won the silver and Omkar Singh of Navy got the bronze (569) on the concluding day of the meet.