DAY 2: Gagan shoots for bronze and fans

DATELINE DOHA
It was China all the way round at the Lusail Shooting Complex on the opening day of the shooting competition in Doha on December 2. The Chinese won the team and individual events in all the three categories contested in the day - the men's and women's 10m Air Rifle and the women's Trap - without facing any resistence.
Liu and Zhu made it a 1-2 in the 10m Air Rifle and South Korean Yu Jae-Chul won bronze.
World champion Li Du showed why she is unmatched in the women's 10m Air Rifle event by taking the gold ahead of team-mate and world number three Zhao Yinghui.
Wu Liuxi finished third, but the bronze medal was awarded to fourth-placed Olga Dovgun of Kazakhstan.
China’s World number one Li Chen won the women's Trap individual event. The biggest
Upset for India was when Gagan Narang failed to bag an individual medal in his favourite Men’s 10m Air Rifle Competition. “I was under extreme pressure. Pressure took the toll on me,” he said after the finals.
Talking about changing his technique, the shooter said, “Well, I shoot fast. That’s my style, but I need to change it.” In his comparison, the Chinese took their own time and shot calmly and hardly showed any nervousness. In fact World Number one and Olympic champion Zhu Qinan was struggling initially, but he came from behind and shot the silver medal.
Indian spectators present at the venue including shooters like Anjali Bhagwat, Pemba Tamang, Vijay Kumar, among others, talked about this issue of Gagan shooting very fast (as soon as the signal to fire is given) among themselves when the contest was on.
The Indian girls too won bronze in the women’s team event of the 10m Air Rifle event.
Among the Indian dignitaries present, were Jagdish Tytler and Digvijay Singh.
Although, it was a bad day for the Indian television channels.
While, Chinese journalists had a hectic day on the range, sending updates and doing phone-in interviews as the red flag was flying on the top, Indian TV channel journalists were taken by surprise, when they got calls from their respective offices in New Delhi that India won gold in the Men's trap event. This happened after Aaj Tak - a leading Hindi channel flashed this news on the television (SABSE TEZ). It also went ahead and called up its correspondent here in Doha and even did a phone-in interview announcing that India won its first gold in shooting.
This created confusion among the rival channels and some of their correspondents here were pulled up for being late in informing them that India took the gold. However, the confusion was cleared a little later and thus AAJ TAK made a fool out of themselves.
Meanwhile, Chinese shooting head coach Wang Yifu said, "Overall we performed very well today, but our shooters were a bit nervous and under pressure today. It's not easy to win a gold medal in the rifle event because Indian and Korean shooters are very strong competitors, but I'm confident enough our shooters perfrom the best under pressure."
Although the Indian shooters were complaining about the rudeness of the officials here a few days ago, they are impressed with the world class shooting range here. According to some Indian shooters, the Lusail Shooting Complex is the best they have seen till now.
Indian fans too thronged on the first day as the Indian star Gagan Narang was competing. However, Narang could add only a bronze medal in the Men's 10M Air Rifle team event and lost out on an individual medal. "I was under extreme pressure. It just wasn't my day," he said after the event.
But spectators and even some foreign journalists, were taken by surprise to see Narang's shooting spree continue after his event was over, only this time, it was with his camera.
Gagan is a keen photographer and also has a coffee-table book on Melbourne Commonwealth Games under his belt. He was busy shooting pictures of the medal ceremony and even of the Indian delegates present for the event. Gagan had shot around 3,000 pictures in Melbourne and with a week's break for him here in Doha, it seems he is all game for double the number of pictures of the Asian Games.
Hosts Qatar had little to cheer about in the shooting range yesterday. Qatar's Abdulaziz Al Jabri participated in the Men's 10M Air Rifle and finished 42nd. Regarding his performance, the shooter said, "Today's performance was okay, but I want to perform better in 50M rifle event."
On his future preparations, he added, “My preparartion for the future is going well and I want to perform better in the upcoming events.”
In the women's Trap Team event, Qatar team comprising of Zaineb Al Suwaidi, Zulaikha Al Kubaisi and Noora Al Ali, finished at the bottom with a total score of 133 points. Whereas, in the Men's 10M Air Rifle Team event, Qatar took the penultimate spot with 1,715 points. Members of the home team were Abdulla Al Ahmad, Abdulaziz Al Jabri and and Abdulla Al Madeed.
In the Women's 10M Air Rifle Team event, Qatar finished 12th out of 15 teams participating. Qatar's team comprising of Mahububeh Akhlagi, Shaikha Al Mohammed and Huda Al Muntasr scored a total of 1,153 points.