Manu advances to 10m air pistol final after third-place finish in qualification

• Manu Bhaker qualifies third for the women’s 10m air pistol final with 579-20x after a strong comeback

• Esha Singh and Suruchi Singh miss the final, while India narrowly finishes fourth in the team event behind bronze-medallist Vietnam

• India has already secured multiple shooting medals at the 2026 Asian Games, including silver for Elavenil Valarivan in the individual 10m air rifle event

Double Olympic medallist Manu Bhaker advanced to the women’s 10m air pistol final at the Asian Games after finishing third in the qualification round on Wednesday.

After a slow start, Manu produced a strong comeback to finish with a total score of 579, including 20 inner 10s. She opened with 95 points in the first series before improving to 96 in the second. She then fired 98 in the third series and followed it with 96, 96 and 98 in the remaining three series to finish third in the 60-shot qualification and secure her place in the final.

Esha Singh, however, missed out on the final after finishing 15th with a score of 572-12x. She shot 94, 93, 95, 97, 97 and 96 across her six series. Suruchi Singh finished 26th with 568-12x.

Earlier, the Indian trio of Manu, Esha and Suruchi narrowly missed out on a medal in the women’s 10m air pistol team event. India finished fourth with an aggregate score of 1719-44x, with Vietnam claiming the bronze despite also scoring 1719 points, having registered two more inner 10s (46x).

Manu, the first Indian to win two medals at a single edition of the Olympics, missed out on an individual medal at the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2022. She will now look to make amends in the individual final.

At Hangzhou, Manu was part of India’s gold-winning women’s 25m pistol team alongside Rhythm Sangwan and Esha Singh.

India have already secured multiple medals in shooting at the 2026 Asian Games. Elavenil Valarivan, Sonam Maskar and Vidarsa Vinod won silver in the women’s 10m air rifle team event, with Elavenil adding an individual silver in the same discipline.

The following day, Himanshu Dhillon and Rudrankksh Patil won silver in the men’s 10m air rifle team event. Himanshu and Rudrankksh then added silver and bronze, respectively, in the individual event.

With IANS inputs