Tokyo Olympics: A rare miss from Saurabh Chaudhary breaks million hearts

PUNE: On Friday night, when a fan on Twitter wrote to Abhinav Bindra that Saurabh Chaudhary was going to win a gold on Saturday, the Olympic gold medallist replied: “Can’t wait.”
But it seems like Bindra will have to stay at the top alone for a while, as India’s biggest medal hope from shooting crashed when the Meerut boy finished 7th in the men’s 10m air pistol final.
While Saurabh, 19, faltered in the medal round, his compatriot Abhishek Verma (finished 17th) failed to enter the 8-man final. Women 10m air rifle shooters Elavenil Valarivan and Apurvi Chandela too failed to make the final.
After a shaky start and 95 in the first of six series, Saurabh showed immense fight to top the qualifications with 586/600 and reach the final. Abhishek shot 575, his lowest qualification score at the international level.
Saurabh has participated in five World Cups since 2019 and has never come without a medal. His two gold, one silver and two bronze have come against the same shooters, who made it to the final in Tokyo on Saturday. In fact, in Saurabh’s debut at the World Cup at New Delhi in 2019, Saurabh had outscored Mikec Damir (Serbia), Christian Reitz (Germany), Zhang Bowen, Pang Wei (both China) and Javad Foroughi (Iran), all finalists on Saturday, to win gold with a world record score.
On Saturday, Foroughi (244.8 OR), Damir (237.9) and Wei (217.6) won gold, silver and bronze, respectively.
However, in the final on Saturday Saurabh, for the first time, looked the weakest shooter among the eight finalists in the last four years.
His 48.7 after the first five shots, 96.8 after 10 shots and 137.4 after 14 rounds were the lowest he has shot in a final. A slip-up like this at the Olympics is unforgiving.
He started with a 10.1 in the final, and was troubled by 9.4, 9.0, 9.5 and 9.7. In a 24-shot final, where eliminations start after the 12th shot, it is never easy to recover after hitting such shots. To make things worse, an 8.8 and 9.9 in his eight and ninth shots made his comeback impossible.
Although, because of Saurabh’s past performances, his rare fall in the final looked like a poor performance, it needs to be acknowledged that the Youth Olympics Games gold medallist became India’s youngest finalist at the Olympics across all sports.
“If we equate good shooting with medals, then you may say Saurabh didn’t do well. But as coach, I see a shooter fighting to climb up after a bad series and making it to the final. He couldn’t come back in the final. The finals only look good from the outside, and not to the one who shoots them,” national pistol coach Samaresh Jung told TOI.
Earlier, Elavenil shot 626.5 to finish 16th and Apurvi could score only 621.9 for a forgettable show at the Games.
Elavenil, Saurabh and Abhishek will get another shot at the medals in the mixed team event.