Disappointment for India as Apurvi, Elavenil fail to qualify for 10m air rifle final
Tokyo: Indian shooters endured a poor start at the Tokyo Olympics with first-timer Elavenil Valarivan and Apurvi Chandela failing to qualify for the finals of the women's 10m air rifle event here on Saturday.
China's Qian Wang won the ongoing Games' first gold medal after she shot an Olympic record 251.8 in the eight-woman finals.
The Russian Olympic Committee's Anastasiia Galashina claimed the silver with 251.1 while Switzerland's Nina Christen took the bronze with 230.6.
Making her Olympic debut, world number one Elavenil finished 16th in the qualifications after shooting 626.5 over six series of 10 shots each, while the more experienced Apurvi, who is also the finals world record holder in the event, settled for the 36th place after aggregating 621.9 at the Asaka Range.
The Indians were off to a decent start and even as Apurvi slipped after a disastrous second series, with two scores of 9.5 and 9.9, the 21-year-old Elavenil tried to remain in the reckoning with a fine performance in the third series, including shooting a perfect 10.9.
However, Elavenil, a World Cup Final gold-medallist, could not maintain the same form and a couple of 9s in the fifth and sixth series pushed her further down.
Apurvi, 28, who has won two World Cup gold medals during her excellent run in 2019, had finished 34th at the 2016 Rio Games.
Earlier, Norway's Jeanette Hegg Duestad topped the qualification with an Olympic record score of 632.9 but missed the world record by 1.1, while South Korea's Heemoon Park was second with 631.7. American challenger Mary Carolyn Tucker finished third with 631.4.
In a very competitive field consistently producing high scores, Elavenil fell two points short of the total shot by Galashina, who grabbed the eighth and last spot in the final by setting the cut-off at 628.6.
Ironically, the women's 10m air rifle was the first event in which India clinched quotas for the Tokyo Games with Apurvi and Anjum Moudgil claiming them at the 2018 World Championship in Changwon, Korea.
Moudgil's quota was given to Elavenil on the basis of the latter's excellent run of form through the Olympic selection cycle.
The women's 10m air rifle event saw one of the largest fields in Tokyo, with a total of 50 shooters in the fray.
A total of 60 shots are fired in the qualification round in an allotted time of 75 minutes from a 0.177 inches caliber air rifle, and scoring is in decimals of 10 with a 10.9 being the perfect shot.
Normally, anything over 630 (out of a maximum 654) is good enough to make the 8-player final.
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Bengal MLA Humayun Kabir floats new party days after laying foundation for Babri-style mosque
Beldanga (WB), Dec 22 (PTI): West Bengal MLA Humayun Kabir on Monday floated a new outfit, Janata Unnayan Party, days after he was suspended by the TMC for laying the foundation stone for a Babri-style mosque in Murshidabad district.
Addressing a public meeting in Beladanga, Kabir named eight candidates that his new party will field in the 2026 assembly elections in the state.
Kabir, the MLA of Bharatpur, said he would contest the assembly polls from two seats, Rejinagar and Beldanga in Murshidabad.
"We can only tell you later how many seats we will be finally contesting," he told the gathering.
Kabir said his mission is to oust Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from power in the assembly polls, which will be due in less than six months.
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"Mamata Banerjee is no longer the same person I knew. She is beyond the reach of the common man," he alleged.
The BJP alleged Kabir was working to help the TMC return to power.
"Kabir will not be a factor in the next assembly polls. He will face the drubbing of the electorate along with his old friend TMC, with which he is still in touch in a clandestine manner. Both Kabir and his new party will be rejected by the people of Bengal," state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya claimed.
He claimed Kabir was attempting to split "BJP votes" in the assembly polls.
"In the wake of the situation in Bangladesh, people of Bengal will thwart Kabir's attempts and elect a strong nationalist force like the BJP, only which can defeat fundamentalists," he claimed.
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The TMC is yet to comment on Kabir's new party.
The TMC had suspended Kabir on December 4 after his announcement to build a Babri-style mosque triggered a massive row.
On December 6, the day the Babri Masjid was razed in Ayodhya in 1992, a defiant Kabir laid the foundation stone for the mosque at Rejinagar.
Kabir has had a tryst with most of the major political parties in the state over the last 10 years.
In 2015, he was "expelled" by the TMC for six years for criticising the CM and alleging that she was trying to make her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, the "king".
He contested the 2016 assembly elections as an Independent from the Rejinagar seat, but lost to Congress candidate Rabiul Alam Chowdhury. He subsequently joined the Congress, which then had a huge presence in the district, but switched to the BJP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP fielded him as its candidate in the Murshidabad Lok Sabha seat, and managed to secure the third spot after the TMC and Congress nominees. He then returned to the TMC and, in 2021, became the MLA of Bharatpur.
