Indian Olympic athletes Arjun Babuta and Ramita Jindal finished outside the Top 4 in the 10m Air Rifle Mixed Team event at Paris Olympics 2024, despite putting in a strong performance.
Only four teams out of 28 could qualify for the knockout stages, i.e, a gold medal match for the top two teams and a bronze medal match for teams ranked third and fourth. India could not make it to the final four.
Ramita and Arjun finished in sixth place with a total of 628.7 points after three series, out of which Ramita managed 314.5 and Arjun got 314.2 points. They fell one point short of Germany, who finished at number four with 629.7.
Speaking with news agency ANI, Arjun Babuta said, “We did whatever we could, strategized everything. We followed our routine and process. We missed it by a slight margin but we have individual matches to look out for and we are looking forward to that.”
"I did my best and I am happy with that. Looking at the scoreboard, we definitely feel disheartened as we missed by a small margin and talking about the shooting, I think we have been doing great in the past and will do great in the future as well. Today was not our best performance, scorewise. There was no lack of effort from us," Arjun added.
Meanwhile, Ramita said, "We moment ourselves and try to be little faster. We train in both slow and fast way so it's not difficult to shoot 15 shots in just 10 minutes." She added, "I was not looking at the score, I try to give my best and stay in the moment. I was just focusing on the process."
Now, Germany will play in the bronze medal match with Kazakhstan, whose team consisting of Le Alexandra and Satpayev Islam finished at number three with 630.8 points in three series.
The gold medal match will be between the defending champions, China, who finished at the top spot with 632.2 points and South Korea, who finished at number two with 631.4 points.
(With inputs from ANI)
