Shooter Karmakar misses 50m rifle prone bronze narrowly

Joydeep Karmakar narrowly missed out on a bronze medal in the 50m rifle prone event after setting an Olympic record in the qualifying stage at  the London Olympics,

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In an event where 10m air rifle bronze-medallist Gagan Narang failed to qualify for the final, Karmakar put his best foot forward to finish fourth with a tally of 699.1, which was 1.9 adrift of bronze medal winner's score of 701.0.

In Karmakar's event, after scoring 595 out of 600 before qualifying for the finals through a shoot-off with eight others, who were all tied in fourth place, the 32-year-old Kolkata lad shot consistently well in the finals, but still finished outside the medal bracket.

The one point difference that Karmakar conceded to the eventual bronze medallist, Rajmond Debevec of Slovenia, proved decisive in the battle for the third place.

Karmakar shot sequence of 10.1, 10.6, 10.7, 10.5, 10.7, 10.2, 10.0, 10.2, 10.7, 10.4 for a total of 104.1, while Debevec fired a 105.0, a difference of less than one.

The gold medal went to Sergei Martynov of Belarus, who created a new world record of 705.5 and the silver was picked by Belgian Lionel Cox (701.2).

Earlier in the day, Gagan Narang failed to replicate the form that fetched him the 10m air rifle bronze and crashed out of the 50m rifle prone event in the qualifying stage.

Narang, who just four days ago became the India's first medal winner at the London Games, could fire only 593 out of 600 to finish a shocking 18th in a field of 50 competitors and lost a great chance of another podium finish.

Photograph: Lars Baron/Getty Images