Indian women shooters bagged two gold medals at the Asian Shooting Championship on Monday but an Olympic berth still continued to elude India on the fourth day in Doha.
The Indian Women's Air Pistol team of Annu Raj Singh, Shweta Chaudhry and Heena Sidhu pipped the formidable Chinese team to win the gold by just one point.
Veteran Raj Kumari bagged the second gold of the day for India when she won the 50m Women's prone by a comfortable margin. This is India's first ever gold medal in prone in the Asian Championship.
It was sweet revenge for the Indian Women's Air Pistol team which had lost the Asian Games gold to China in Guangzhou by just one point.
Annu Raj, who has won a quota for India in this event shot a 383/400 in qualification and so did Shweta. Heena Sidhu after a series of 95, 96 and 98 shot a disastrous 92 with an 8 on the last shot.
Her qualification score of 381 put her in a four-way tie-shoot for a place in the final. She had 20 minutes to compose herself after that last shot and came back strongly with a score of 51.4 after five shots to reach the final.
Thailand's Tanyaporn Prucksakorn also reached the final after a score of 49.8 in the tie shoot.
Korea's Jang Mi Kim entered the final in first place with a score of 385 along with Ying Chen of China, who also shot 385. Three shooters had already won quota places leaving the rest to compete for two available qualifying spots.
Shweta took advantage of a nervous start by her rivals to move into contention for a podium finish. A 10.1 on her sixth shot had even taken her into the lead for the first time but her next shot was a low 7.6 that dropped her straight to the last position and she eventually finished sixth with 479.5.
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