Indian shooter Manu Bhaker narrowly missed securing a medal hat-trick at the Paris 2024 Olympics, finishing fourth in the women’s 25m air pistol event at the National Shooting Center in Chateauroux.
Despite holding a top-three position for most of the final, a subpar series towards the end caused her to drop to fourth place after a shoot-off with Hungary’s Veronika Major, who claimed the bronze medal. Jiin Yang of South Korea won the gold medal, defeating France’s Camille Jedrzejewski in a shoot-off.
Even though her campaign ended in disappointment, Manu Bhaker still made significant history at the Paris 2024 Games. Earlier, she became the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal in shooting by securing bronze in the women’s 10m air pistol final. She followed this with another bronze in the 10m air pistol mixed team event alongside Sarabjot Singh, earning India’s first Olympic shooting medal in a team event.
In the 25m air pistol shooting final, Manu started strong, tying for second place with 10 points after the first stage. Jiin Yang led with 13 points. Bhaker initially fell to sixth place during the elimination stage but made a perfect score in the second series to rise to third. She trailed Jiin Yang and Veronika Major.
No Indian has won 3 individual’s medals at the Olympics. PV Sindhu, Sushil Kumar, and Norman Pritchard (British India) each have two.
On Friday, Manu Bhaker secured second place in the qualifying round with a score of 590, just behind Veronika Major’s 592, which equaled the Olympic qualifying record.
Bhaker was the only athlete from the 21-member Indian shooting team to compete in multiple individual events, contributing two of India’s three medals in Paris 2024—all from shooting.
India’s skeet shooters, Maheshwari Chauhan, Raiza Dhillon, and Anant Jeet Singh Naruka, also competed on Saturday. Naruka finished 24th in the men’s skeet qualification round with a score of 116, failing to advance to the final. Chauhan placed eighth with a score of 71 after Day 1 of the women’s skeet qualifiers, while Dhillon was 25th with a score of 66. Nele Wissmer of Germany and Amber Rutter of the USA led the field with scores of 74 heading into the second day of qualifiers.