Elizabeth does Kerala proud again

Kerala’s Elizabeth Susan Koshy claimed her second gold medal in the shooting competitions here on Thursday.

Winner of the 50m rifle prone title the other day, Elizabeth showed amazing consistency after a none-too-impressive start, to seal the gold medal in the 50m rifle 3 position, much to the delight of the home team camp and its supporters. It was Haryanvi Anjum Moudgil who led through the initial kneeling phase and the first round in prone of the final before Lajja Gauswami (Gujarat) surged ahead.

Having started off with a sequence of 46.3 points, Elizabeth was fifth going into the second phase (prone) with a total of 147.2 points. However, she clawed her way back in this round, moving into medal contention behind Lajja, with a scorecard of 303.2 points.

But in the first two rounds of standing, the Kerala shooter seemed to slip a bit after the competition was stopped for a while due to a technical snag that caused malfunction of the scoreboard. Elizabeth, however, overcame this lapse of concentration right at the nick of time even as Lajja got eliminated.

W. Sandhya (Tamil Nadu) who had shot well through the prone phase was forced to settle for the bronze with a score of 434.5 points, leaving the Kerala shooter and Vedangi Virag (Maharashtra) in contention for the gold medal.

Elizabeth shot a 10.7 and then a 10.1 in the last two shots and as the Maharashtra girl could only compile 9.6 and 10.1, the Kerala girl was finally through with a tally of 445.9 points, holding a 1.2 point lead over her rival.

Rahi Sarnobat (Maharashtra) was the winner of the 25m pistol gold medal and Jitu Rai (Services) made amends for his poor showing in the 50m pistol on the opening day by winning the 10m air pistol.

The results:

Men: 10m air pistol: 1. Jitu Rai (Ser), 200.9, 2. Omkar Singh (Ser), 197.5, 3. Amit Kumar (MP), 177.9. Team: 1. Services, 1724, 2. Punjab, 1712, 3. Uttar Pradesh), 1711.

Women: 25m pistol: 1. Rahi Sarnobat (Mah), 2. Surbhi Pathak (MP), 3. Shreys Gawande (Mah). Team: 1. Maharashtra, 1722, 2. Haryana, 1714, 3. Madhya Pradesh, 1697. 50m rifle 3 position: 1. Elizabeth Susan Koshy (Ker), 445.9, 2. Vedangi Virag (Mah), 444.7, 3. W. Sandhya (TN), 434.5. Team: 1. Maharashtra, 1710 (58x), 2. Haryana, 1710 (56x), 3. Punjab, 1699.