India’s Ravi Kumar shot brilliantly throughout the men’s 10m air rifle event but still missed out on a podium finish to eventually secure the fifth position at the ISSF World Cup on Friday.
Ravi shot 185.7 in the medal round on the first day of the competition and qualified for the eight-man 24-shot final in fourth place, shooting a high score of 629.1 in the qualification.
This was Ravi’s second successive World Cup final of the year, having finished eighth in the first ISSF World Cup stage in New Delhi.
The event saw the first gold medal of the competition when Russia’s rifle ace Sergey Kamenskiy notched up a world record 250.9 at the end of the air rifle final.
Fellow Rio Olympics medallist Vladimir Maslennikov won the silver while Vitali Bubnovich of Belarus clinched the bronze.
Two other Indians in the fray, Satyendra Singh and Deepak Kumar, shot 623.9 and 617.8 to finish in 46th and 84th place respectively among 129 shooters.
It was an excellent performance by Ravi in a high quality competition as is evident with the world record score in the finals. There were high scores in the qualification with 627.8 being the score of the eighth place qualifier.
Seasoned campaigners and top shooters like Peter Sidi and Istvan Peni of Hungary, Rio silver medallist in the event Serhiy Kulish of Ukraine, Rio finalist Illia Charheika of Belarus and former Olympic champion Alin Moldoveanu of Romania fell by the wayside in qualification.
