Paris Olympics 2024: Indian shooter Sarabjot Singh rued a 'bad day' at the shooting range after missing out on being part of the 10m air pistol final at the ongoing Paris Olympics 2024 on Sunday. Sarabjot was in contention for a top-eight finish, which guarantees a place in the final, but fell short in the final sixth series of the qualification round.
Sarabjot was in 7th place after the end of five series. He hit 10 brilliant shots in the fifth series to take all 100 points from it but faltered in the sixth series, hitting 93/100 to fall to the 9th place.
The 22-year-old shooter opened up on his disappointment after the qualifiers. "I thought I did well from my end, but it was a bad day. I can't understand how all of this happened. I gave it my best. But it's fine, its my first Olympics, it was a good experience and I've learnt a few lessons. I need to better my technique. I'll work on it when I go back to India," Sarabjot Singh told the broadcasters after the qualification round.
"It did not feel any different, it was like a normal match. It was just a bad day for me, but I gave it my best," he said on how it felt in his debut Olympics.
Sarabjot claimed that he got distracted after looking at the scores following his 100/100 fifth series and faltered in the final one. "I looked behind once [after that series], got distracted and my next series was bad after that. I don't usually look at the scores on the screen, I focus on my technique and how my previous shot was," he said.
The Indian shooters began their campaign off the target at the Paris Olympic Games 2024 on Day 1 of the Games. In the opening two shooting events for India, the shooters could not proceed further from the qualification.
The two Indian mixed teams in the 10m air rifle event faltered in the qualification round, whereas the 10m air pistol athletes failed to book a ticket for the finals. In the mixed event, the shooting team of Ramita Jindal and Arjun Babuta finished 6th, while Elavenil Valarivan and Sandeep Singh secured a 12th-place finish in the 28-team event.
The top four teams made it to the medal matches with the first two playing in the Gold medal match and the next two featuring in the Bronze medal match.
In the 10m air pistol qualification too, India's Sarabjot Singh and Arjun Singh Cheema got knocked out in the qualification round. In the 33-athlete arena, Sarabjot finished 9th and missed out on featuring in the medal match by a whisker. The top eight of the field qualified for the finals and Sarabjot was agonizingly close and one inner 10 short of making it to the final. He had 577-16x points, while Robin Walter, the 8th-placed athlete, had 577-17x points.
