Rio de Janeiro: India’s best medal prospect Jitu Rai flattered to deceive and missed the qualification for the final round by two points in the men’s 50m pistol, and finished 12th in the Olympic shooting competition here on Wednesday.
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The other Indian participant in the event, Prakash Nanjappa, finished a lowly 25th out of 41 with an aggregate of 547 as the shooters continued to draw blanks from the ranges.
Jitu consistently managed to hit the bull’s eye on nine occasions in what is considered as his pet event and his cumulative scores after the six series qualification round read 92, 95, 90, 94, 95 and 88 to total 554.
Multiple medallist at the ISSF World Cup, World Championships, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games, Jitu started the qualification with 91 and fired 95 in the second series.
His third series started with a ideal 10 followed by two 9s.
The Indian shooter bounced back with scores of 94 and 95 in Series 4 and Series 5, respectively, which saw him climb up to the fifth spot.
It was a tough final for Jitu as he began with some bad shots with first three being below the 10-mark.
A bad 7 in the next shot dipped him further to 12th to end his campaign. He had also struggled in the opening of 10m Pistol finals, the event he’s ranked 3rd in the world for, eventually leading to his demise.
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In the subsequent series, despite managing 10 flawless 10 scores, the shooter’s scores read 90, 91, 93, 95 and 93 after the final round of qualification landing him at the 25th position. But as fate would have it, the last series saw the shooter drop drastically in the points table and finished outside the top 8.
