India's medal hopeful shooter Sourav Choudhary could not perform as expected in the final of the 10m air pistol event of the Tokyo Olympics and had to settle for seventh place. Saurabh, who entered the finals on top of the qualification round, was far away from a medal. In this eight-shooter final, he shot a total of 137.4 and finished at number seven.
Saurabh Chaudhary topped the qualification round with 586 points and made it to the finals.
Of the 36 shooters competing, 8 advanced to the finals. India's Abhishek Verma missed out on the final despite good efforts and finished 17th. He had to bear the brunt of scoring eight twice in the last series. Choudhary, who has won eight golds at the international level in the last three years, performed brilliantly, scoring 586 in six series. China's Zhang Bowen finished second and Germany's Christian Reitz third.
Verma's score was 575. 'Wonder Boy' Chaudhary, playing for the first time in the Olympics, scored a perfect 100 in the fourth series. After this he got the first position among eight shooters by scoring 98 consecutively. Chaudhary, an Asian Games and Youth Olympics gold medalist, scored a perfect 10 but could not maintain the momentum in the second half of the first series. Then jumped from 19th to the top eight and scored a perfect 100. He managed to beat the highly experienced world and Olympic champions.
Earlier, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Abhinav Bindra, Gagan Narang and Vijay Kumar have brought medals in the Olympics.