Rio Olympics: Shooters Miraj Khan, Gurpreet Singh crash out of contention

Rio de Janeiro: Indian shooters’ woeful campaign continued as Mairaj Ahmad Khan, after raising medal hopes, lost out in shoot out and crashed out of skeet qualification round, finishing 9th in the Olympic shooting competition on Saturday. Earlier in the morning, Gurpreet Singh failed to make the final of the 25m rapid fire pistol event by a whisker as he ended 7th in the qualification round. Top six qualify for the final round. Mairaj, who shot a total of 121 along with four other shooters, was involved in a shoot-off for the final two spots to reach the semi-finals at the Olympic Shooting Centre. The 40-year-old Indian was out of the competition in his very first attempt as he fired +3. Abdullah Alrashidi, a Kuwaiti competing under the International Olympic Committee flag, took the top spot in the qualification round with an Olympic record of 123 while Sweden's Marcus Svensson was second but with the same score while another Swede, Stefan Nilsson came third with 122. Starting the day at the 10th spot with a cumulative score of 72 from Day 1 on Friday, Mairaj scored 25 in the fourth round to climb to the sixth place with an overall total of 97. Mairaj finished his final round scoring 24 to jump to fifth with an overall total of 121. But four other shooters – Italy's Gabriele Rossetti, Denmark's Jesper Hansen, Frenchmen Eric Delaunay and Anthony Terras – also finished with the same total, which needed a shoot-off for deciding the final two spots. In the shoot-off, Rossetti and Jesper scored a +12 each to seal the final two places ending the Indian's campaign in the discipline. Gurpreet finished seventh, just outside the six qualifying spots, with a cumulative 581 points with 24 inner 10s at the Olympic Shooting Centre. The Indian army man, who was placed 10th at the end of first qualifying phase with 289 points, added  292 points to his total aggregate of 581, including 24x, to miss the finals by a whisker. His one bad round of 90 on Friday cost him a place in the final of the event.