Jain corners limelight with twin pistol gold

Punjab colt Akshay Jain grabbed a golden pistol double, upstaging former Commonwealth Games champion Samaresh Jung in the process, in the Kumar Surendra Singh Memorial Shooting Championships at the Balewadi ranges.

Jain took a three-point lead over CISF's Jung, the star Indian shooter at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, in the preliminaries and used it to his advantage in the final to bag the men's 50m free pistol title.

Jain, who also clinched the corresponding crown in the juniors' event to complete a fine golden double, shot 550 in the qualifiers as compared to Jung's 547.

Though Jung outperformed Jain in the finals, tallying 94.1 for an overall tally of 641.1, Jain's effort of 92.2 in the eight-man summit contest was enough for the youngster to pocket the gold with an aggregate of 642.2.

Army's Om Prakash took the third place with 637.1 while Navy's Omkar Singh, who had won three gold medals in last year's Delhi Commonwealth Games, was pushed to the fourth spot tallying 535.5.

In the team championships, Om Prakash (540), Gurpal Singh (536) and Vijay Singh (548) helped army to bag the gold with 1624, with Navy (Satendra Kumar, Omkar and Naresh Kumar) getting the silver (1592) and Border Security Force the bronze (1588).