Firing 391 out of 400 in the kneeling round, Chain raised his performance a notch higher to shoot three flawless 100 scores in the prone round to move into the final round sitting pretty among the top eight.
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In kneeling, Chain shot 98, 95, 99, 99 for a total of 391. Chain Singh – who won gold in this event at the 2016 South Asian Games – was the more accurate of the Indian pair at the Olympic Shooting Centre, shooting 392 in the kneeling stage, 397 in the prone stage and 380 in the standing stage for a total of 1168 points.
Narang, on the other hand, never looked in contention and fired 383, 395 and 384 in the three stages of the competition.
This time the Indian shooting squad had 12 members, the highest ever for the Olympics, and yet they ended without a single medal. He failed to get past the qualifying round in all the three events he competed in – 10m air rifle, 50 m rifle prone and 50m 3 positions.
France’s Alexis Raynaud took the bronze in his first Olympics at the age of 21. Four years later in Beijing, Bindra made history by winning a gold medal in the 10m air rifle event to end India’s excruciating wait for an individual gold medalist.
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It may be recalled that Sanjeev Rajput, who had won the Olympic quota but was denied a ticket to Rio and had the ignominy of seeing his quota exchanged to a shotgun quota for trap, had recently won the World Cup silver in Baku, albeit with a low qualification score of 1167.
