Shreyasi Singh grabbed a lifeline with both hands to clinch the women’s double trap gold in a shoot-off against Australia’s Emma Cox to clinch India’s 12th gold medal on day seven of the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia, on Wednesday.
The 26-year-old looked resigned to yet another silver medal finish after completing her fourth and final round with Cox needing just 19 shots to clinch the gold medal after managing a run of 28 and 27 in the earlier two rounds.
(Read more: Follow all the updates on an action-packed day seven for India here.)
But nerves probably got the better of the 25-year-old Australian as she scored just 18 off her 30, missing her last shot, to end up tied on 96 with the Indian and needing a shoot-off to decide the gold medal winner.
Singh, who had won the silver in the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the 2017 Commonwealth Championship in Brisbane, needed to regroup having sat out for about 15 minutes. But the Indian hit both the targets while Cox missed the second to give India yet another gold from the shooting range.
India now has - at the time of publishing - won four gold, two silver and four bronze from the shooting events while the overall tally stands at 12 gold, four silver and seven bronze.
Singh, the daughter of former National Rifle Association of India president, began with a steady 24 but lost ground on Cox in the next two rounds and would have resigned to finishing second when Cox started the last round with a few perfect shots.
But as luck would have it, the Indian did get a lifeline and she made no mistake this time around.
It wasn’t the case with the other Indian in fray, Varsha Varman. The 23-year-old, who has taken a break from her Harvard course to pursue shooting till the 2020 London Olympics, was in a bronze medal winning position till the start of the last round.
However, in the final round she could only manage a score of 19, allowing Scotland’s Linda Pearson to bounce back after a forgettable third round of 18 to clinch the third spot. Varman missed bronze by a solitary shot.
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