Anjali Vedpathak bags gold

Anjali Vedpathak won a gold in the women's Air Rifle event to keep the Indian flag flying high at the Commonwealth shooting championships in Bisley, England, on Wednesday.

Anjali shot a 395 in the preliminary round and 101.1 in the final to take the top spot with a combined tally of 496.1 points.

But compatriot Anuja Tere was unfortunate not to have finished in the top three. After remaining in contention for the silver medal for most of the time, Anuja could manage just 8.8 in her last shot in the final and finished fourth. Her score of 493 (393+100) was just 0.3 points short of the bronze medal-winning performance.

The silver in the event was taken by Minett Louise of England who shot a 493.8 (394+99.8).

The third Indian in the fray Meena Kumari, who made it to the final round with a score of 387, fired an impressive 101.3 but her total of 488.3 was not enough to fetch a medal, national coach Prof Sunny Thomas informed from Bisley.

Samaresh Jung, who had won a gold in the Air Pistol event on Tuesday, was another unlucky Indian in the Wednesday's competition. Jung fired a 559 in the preliminary round and enjoyed a comfortable 1.6 points lead going into his last shot of the Three Pistol event. However, a poor 6.5 in the last shot dashed all his hopes for a second individual gold in the championships and he even missed the bronze by 0.2 points.

Jung aggregated 652.2 and finished fourth. The gold in the event was won by David Porter of Australia with 653.7 (555+98.7) points.