The young shooter might regret this for a long, long time.
India's women shooters have had an impressive run thus far at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia.
After Manu Bhaker and Heena Sidhu's heroics, it was the turn of Mehuli Ghosh and Apurvi Chandela to bring home medals. On Monday, young Ghosh settled for the silver medal after forcing a shoot-off in the women's 10m air rifle event with a perfect final shot of 10.9, while Chandela secured bronze in the.
The 17-year Ghosh shot an excellent 10.9 to take the finals into a shoot-ff with Singapore's Martina Lindsay Veloso, the eventual gold medallist with a games record score of 247.2. Ghosh also aggregated a record 247.2 but a 9.9 in the shoot-off put paid to her hopes of claiming the top prize, as Veloso shot 10.3.
It has now been revealed that Ghosh missed out on gold due to a massive error in judgement. Her coach Joydeep Karmakar has stated that the youngster thought she had won after her stunning penultimate shot that forced the shoot-off. The premature celebration, perhaps, made Ghosh lose her focus in the shoot-off.
"Things like that happen, dramatic ends and all that. We were thinking she can make a comeback in the final, as she was on and off. I would say that it wasn’t her best day," Karmakar told The Field.
Defending champions Chandela totalled 225.3 to finish third on the podium. Chandela had earlier smashed her own Commonwealth Games qualifying record from four years back by scoring 423.2.
Chandela's sequence of scores over four series in the qualifying read a very impressive 105.7 105.2 106.1 106.2. While Ghosh was fifth in the qualifying with 413.7 following scores of 104.3 103.7 102.2 and 103.5 over four series.
However, Ghosh, a bronze medallist in her maiden ISSF World Cup outing in Mexico last month, produced a better performance to topple her more experienced compatriot. Ghosh showed her fighting abilities all through but fell short by just .4 in the end.
(Inputs from PTI)
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 "India's Mehuli Ghosh in action during the 2018 CWG on Monday")
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