Deepak, Divyansh finish way down in men’s 10m air rifle

Indian shooters Deepak Kumar and Divyansh Singh Panwar finished a lowly 26th and 32nd, respectively, in the men’s 10m air rifle event of the Tokyo Olympics in Tokyo on Sunday, failing to recover from a poor start in the qualifications.

It was always going to be a tough task for both the Indian shooters after they started off with 102.9 (Deepak) and 102.7 (Divyansh) at the Akasa Range.

Deepak aggregated 624.7 while Divyansh shot 622.8 over six series and could not make the final.

They were never in the picture and things kept getting worse as a series of scores ranging from 9.7 to 9.9 marred their qualifications that comprised 47 participants including big names such as Istvan Peni of Hungaria, USA’s Lucas Kozeniesky, Petar Gorsa of Croatia and the Russian Olympic Committee’s Sergey Kameniskiy.

While Deepak did shoot a 105.2 and 105.3 in the fourth and sixth series, he needed them in the beginning of the match to set himself up nicely. This was after the non-commissioned officer of the Indian Air Force found himself four spots from the bottom of the pile.

Deepak’s sequence of scores read 102.9 103.8 103.7 105.2 103.8 and 105, while Divyansh had 102.7 103.7 103.6 104.6 104.6 and 103.6.

China’s Haoran Yang entered the eight-man final with an Olympic qualification record score of 632.7.

The previous record (630.2) was held by Italian star Niccolo Campriani.