Shooting: Karmakar misses bronze narrowly; finishes fourth

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Joydeep Karmakar narrowly missed out on a bronze medal in the 50m rifle prone event after setting an Olympic record in the qualifying stage at the London Games here on Friday.

In an event where 10m air rifle bronze-medallist Gagan Narang failed to qualify for the finals, Karmakar put his best foot forward to finished fourth with a tally of 699.1, which was 1.9 adrift of bronze medal winner's score of 701.0.

After scoring 595 out of 600 before qualifying for the finals through a shoot-off with eight others, who were all tied in fourth place, the 32-year-old Kolkattan shot consistently well in the finals. But still finished outside the medal bracket.

The one point difference that Karmakar conceded to the eventual bronze medallist, Rajmond Debevec of Slovenia, proved to be decisive in the battle for the third place.

Karmakar shot sequence of 10.1, 10.6, 10.7, 10.5, 10.7, 10.2, 10.0, 10.2, 10.7, 10.4 for a total of 104.1, while Debevec fired a 105.0, a difference of less than one.

The gold medal went to Sergei Martynov of Belarus, who created a new world record of 705.5 and the silver was picked by Belgian Lionel Cox (701.2).

Earlier on Friday, Gagan Narang failed to replicate the form that fetched him the 10m air rifle bronze as he crashed out of the 50m rifle prone event in the qualifying stage and failed to advance to the finals.

Narang, who just four days ago became the India's first medal winner at the London Games, could fire only 593 out of 600 to finish a shocking 18th in a field of 50 competitors and lost a great chance of another podium finish.

Karmakar, however, kept India in the hunt by finishing with 595 points and then 51.6 in the shoot off at the Royal Artillery Barracks.

Karmakar did not have an ideal start as he managed to fire 99 and 98 in the first two rounds. He, however, shot a 100 in the third followed by another 98 in the fourth series.

But two 100s in the last two rounds helped him finish with 595 total points and at tied fourth with eight other shooters.

At the shoot-off, he scored 51.6 to finish at the seventh spot and thereby earned a berth in the eight-man final.

The leader of the qualifying stage, Martynov scored 600 out of 600 to equal both World as well as Olympics record.

Narang started with a 98 in the first series but came back strongly by getting two perfect 10s for consecutive 100s in the second and third round and looked all set to make the cut.

However, he misfired and logged a poor 98 and 97 in the next two rounds, which dashed his chances of making the medal round.

Inspite of hitting a 100 in the sixth and his last round, Narang could finish only behind 17 other shooters in the qualifiers.