Shooter Maheshwari Chauhan on Sunday sealed India's 21st quota place for the Paris Olympics by winning a silver medal in the women's skeet event on the final day of the ISSF Final Olympic Qualification Championship Shotgun in Doha. Maheshwari, competing in her first ISSF final, lost 3-4 to Chile's Francisca Crovetto Chadid in a shoot-off for gold after both were tied on 54 hits in the 60-shot final.
It is India's second Paris quota place in the women's circuit.
“I'm very happy. It's been a lot of hard work over the last few years to get here. I'm a little disappointed with the shoot-off, but overall it was very satisfying,” Maheshwari said after the finale.
The day started with the Indian at the top of the qualifying pile, but a final score of 23 meant she would qualify for the top six final in fourth place. However, her total of 121 did give her the new national record.
Since Chadid had already secured a quota place in previous competitions and China's Jiang Yiting, the sixth qualifier, was ineligible as her country had already used up their quota in the event, Maheshwari fought with three others (Assem Orybay of Kazakhstan, Rigina Meftakhetdinova of Azerbaijan and top qualifier Victoria Larsson from Sweden).
In the first elimination phase (after 20 shots), the Indian was in second place behind Chadid, having missed two targets.
Orynbay the Kazakh was the first to drop with five misses in the first 20 goals. The quota was confirmed after Rigina was the next to drop out, having missed five of the 30. Victoria of Sweden would claim the other available quota.
That probably calmed the nerves as Maheshwari got stronger as the final went on and overtook the leader after 50 shots. Both had missed five at that point.
Maheshwari then had three chances to win gold but it was not to be and she completely missed her double in the third shoot-off round to hand Chadid the gold. PTI OM AM OM AM AM
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