Ruchi books Youth Olympics berth

Pistol shooter Ruchi Singh became the third Indian to secure a quota place for the inaugural Youth Olympic Games at Singapore next year, when she finished seventh in the 10m air pistol youth women’s category at the Asian Airgun Championship in Doha, reports HT Correspondent.

Pistol shooter Ruchi Singh became the third Indian to secure a quota place for the inaugural Youth Olympic Games at Singapore next year, when she finished seventh in the 10m air pistol youth women’s category at the Asian Airgun Championship in Doha on Monday.

HT Image

The 18-year-old from Amethi, who is striving to be in the 2010 Commonwealth core group and shoots with a borrowed pistol, finished outside the medals bracket with an aggregate of 465 (369 + 96). But as each country is awarded one quota place in a particular category, Ruchi earned the country a Youth Olympic berth.

Speaking from Doha, the championship’s technical delegate, Deep Bhatia, said that although there were three Chinese, two Koreans and a Thai shooter ahead of her, Ruchi got the quota as “only one shooter per country is awarded quota and only four quotas are given per event.

“Although the Koreans won the gold and bronze, they still got one quota, while the Chinese who finished second, fifth and sixth in the event too got one place. A Thai shooter who came fourth bagged the third quota, while India won the fourth,” Bhatia explained.

Lovleen Kaur and Surabhi Pathak could not make it to the best-of-eight finals and finished with 368 and 361 points respectively. The team comprising of Shweta Chaudhary (381), Anuraj Singh (378) and Heena Sidhu (370) bagged bronze in the women air pistol event.