National Games | Anish and Narmada shoot gold

Anish and Narmada shoot gold

Narmada Nithin Raju certainly knows how to handle pressure. While Olympians Ramita Jindal and Elavenil Valarivan wobbled under pressure, the Chennai girl came up with a consistent performance to take the women’s 10m air rifle title, the first shooting gold of the 38th National Games, at the Trishul Range here on Thursday.

Narmada tallied an impressive 254.4 points while Maharashtra’s Arya Rajesh (252.5) and Ramita (230.4), the qualification round topper, took silver and bronze.

Ramita, who finished seventh at the Paris Olympics, was on the verge of elimination after the 14th shot in the 24-shot final but managed to save herself in the nick of time. Elavenil, who was in the second rung in the early rounds, finally slipped to the fifth spot.

“The pressure is always going to be there...the only thing is, you have to know how to take it as an advantage. If you keep stressing on it, it’s obviously going to increase,” explained Narmada about her winning secret.

“But if you do breathing, be with the pressure and travel along with it, then you will be fine.”

Meanwhile Haryana’s Paris Olympian Anish Bhanwala, who was into modern pentathlon and had even taken part in international competitions 10 years ago, won the men’s 25m rapid fire pistol gold.

Anish, who found it difficult to work on pentathlon’s five events and opted to focus on shooting, totalled 31 points. Services’ Gurpreet Singh (26) took the silver while Olympian Vijayveer Sidhu (26) picked the bronze.