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Jaspal Rana, Ashok Pandit bag gold

Jaspal Rana and Ashok Pandit won the centrefire pistol pairs gold for India at the Commonwealth Games shooting competition at Langkawi today.

This was India's second gold at the 16th Commonwealth Games. The first one was bagged by Mansher Singh and Manavjit Singh in the trap pairs shooting event on Sunday.

The women shooters this morning however disappointed. Sushma Rana, Jaspal's sister, and Shilpi Singh finished sixth in the air pistol pairs, and Roopa Unnikrishnan and Anjali Vedpathak ended seventh in the sport rifle three position pairs.

It was a good performance from Rana, the holder of the title, though not his best, as he has tallied 590 earlier. He shot 587, which, despite a poor 567 by Pandit, gave the Indians a total of 1,154, four more than the Canadians.

Rana, who looked in good form after winning his badge matches, a warm-up to the main event, here tallied 290 in precision shooting and 297 in rapid this morning.

He had string scores of 50, 48, 48, 47 and 50 in precision, and 49, 49, 50, 50, 50 and 49 in the rapid one. Rana had the best score of the 28 shooters from 14 countries on show. The next best effort was 578, by Canada's John Rochon. Rana had earlier won the centrefire individual and pairs golds at the Victoria Games in 1994.

Pandit too has won two successive gold medals in centrefire -- in Auckland, 1990, and along with Rana the last time. He had 283 in precision, and 284 in rapid with string scores of 48, 46, 47, 47, 48, 47 and 46, 48, 49, 47, 49, 45 respectively.