Curtains come down over India's shooting campaign

London: India's successful shooting campaign at the Olympics came to an end Monday with rifle shooters Gagan Narang and Sanjeev Rajput and trap exponent Manavjit Singh Sandhu failing to qualify for the final rounds here at the Royal Artillery Barracks.

Narang, who won the bronze medal in the men's 10-metre air rifle, and Rajput finished 20th and 26th, respectively, in the 50m three- position event.

For Sandhu, a former World Champion, it was disappointment again for the third time as he finished 16th in the qualifying round and missed the final cut.

In the 50m rifle three-position, much was expected from Rajput but not from Narang, for whom this was not a pet event.

Narang shot 1,164 while Rajput ended with 1,161. The Olympic medallist shot 398 in prone, 377 standing and 389 while kneeling. Rajput had 395 in prone, 378 in standing and 388 while kneeling.

Italy's Niccolo Campriani created an Olympic record scoring a total of 1,180.

Meanwhile, Sandhu got a total score of 119. His best performance came in the fourth round where he had a perfect score of 25. However, it was a little late as he scored a low 22 in the previous round.

Going into the second day of qualification, Sandhu had slim chances of qualifying as he was 25th in a field of 34 on the first day.

But it has been a highly successful campaign for Indian shooters.

Besides the bronze from Narang, pistol shooter Vijay Kumar won the silver while another rifle shooter, Joydeep Karmakar, finished fourth and missed the bronze by a whisker.