Gagan Narang wins gold in 10m air rifle event, Abhinav Bindra gets silver

Ace Indian rifle shooter Gagan Narang today fired a perfect 600 to equal his own world record on his way to upsetting Olympic gold medallist and compatriot Abhinav Bindra and grabbing the men's 10m individual air rifle title in the Commmonwealth Games today.

Ace Indian rifle shooter Gagan Narang on Wednesday fired a perfect 600 to equal his own world record on his way to upsetting Olympic gold medallist and compatriot Abhinav Bindra and grabbing the men's 10m individual air rifle title in the Commmonwealth Games today.

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Narang, who had teamed up with Bindra to clinch the 10m air rifle pairs gold - the first for the country yesterday -took a giant stride in the qualification round by scoring the perfect 600 score while the Chandigarh shooter replied with 595.

The Hyderabad marksman, who had done a similar feat in the preliminaries in the Beijing World Cup two years ago, performed better in the finals too by scoring 103.6 as compared to Bindra's 103.0 to settle the fight for the gold with an overall tally of 703.6, a new Games mark.

Incidentally Bindra had won the gold in the Beijing Olympics in the same event.

The 1-2 sweep of the medals by Indian marksmen, that left Englishman James Huckle to settle for the bronze, boosted India's tally of medals on the third day of competitions to 13, out of which six are of the golden variety.

After reaching the final, Poncha said, "This is the first time we made it to the final and it is a good feeling. Though a medal is not a possibility, we will continue to do well. There is no pressure."

Virdhawal Khade of India qualified for the semifinals of the men's 100m freestyle after finishing 13th, while Pooja Alva also entered the semifinals of the women's 100m butterfly by bagging the 15th spot, as the top 16 make it to the last four stage.

A para-sport swimmer also brought some smiles as Sachin Verma progressed to the final of the 50m S9 freestyle men category by finishing eighth.

But the other Indians failed to advance. In women's 800m freestyle, Richa Mishra missed the bus and also they could not make a mark in either men's 200m backstroke or women's 200m breaststroke.