Manu Bhaker falls agonisingly short of LA Olympics quota spot

The Indian 25m women's pistol team won a gold medal at the ISSF World Championships in Doha on Tuesday but that provided little consolation as Manu Bhaker and Esha Singh, the two finalists, failed to secure an LA Olympic quota place.

Manu came agonisingly close to winning the coveted quota and medal for India after multiple shoot-offs in a high quality final, but fell just short, finishing fourth. The first three shooters -- Olympic Champion Jin Yang of Korea, Thu Vinh Trinh of Vietnam and Yueyue Zhang of China -- grabbed the three available Olympic quota spots from the event.

Double Paris Olympics medallist Manu had earlier finished fifth in air pistol, missing the quota in that event. India have so far won just one Olympic quota, which came in 10m air pistol through Jaypal Malviya.

On Tuesday, Manu and Asian Games silver medallist Esha shot superbly in the second stage of qualification (rapid round) to make it to the eight-shooter final. Esha totalled 590 to take third place and Manu (587) qualified sixth, while TS Divya (584) finished 10th. The trio tallied 1761 points to clinch the team gold, finishing ahead of South Korea (1748) and Vietnam (1745)

With two top Indians gunning for the Olympics quota, hopes were high. The start wasn't good for them though. Esha, bronze medallist in the last edition, managed just one hit out of five (a hit is 10.2) in the first series, and though she had five out of five in the next series, she could not cover enough ground. Manu started with two hits but kept getting better.

After the third series, Manu and Esha were tied seventh, scoring nine hits out of 15 shots. That's where the elimination started and Manu turned it around. She struck four in a row to survive while Esha bowed out in eighth position (11/20).

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Next, Manu was tied with Doreen Vennekamp of Germany in seventh place and came through three rounds of tense shoot-off to survive. The competition got fiercer at this stage. After the sixth series, Manu, Zhang and the seasoned Veronika Major were all tied with 20 hits (out of 30) and were involved in another series of shoot-offs. Manu retained her composure and pulled through, leaving the other two to fight for elimination.

With five shooters left to fight for three quota spots, the drama was still to unfold. After the 7th series, Manu, Zhang and Joana Castelao of Portugal entered another tie-breaker, having scored 24/35. Manu calmly negotiated this one too, and was placed joint third with Zhang (24 hits). Vietnam's Trinh was at the top with 31 hits and Yang was in the second position (29). In the next series that decided the LA quota places, Manu had three hits, while Zhang had five out of five under pressure to seal the quota. Trinh and Yang also scored 5/5. All three eventually made the podium and took the Olympic quota places.