India's Manu Bhaker continued her fine run at the Paris Olympics 2024 as she and Sarbajot Singh qualified for the bronze medal match in the 10m air pistol mixed team event on Monday, July 29. Manu and Sarbajot finished 3rd in the qualification round in Paris on Monday as Rhythm Sangwan and Arjun Singh Cheema finished 10th.
Manu and Sarabjot would score 193, 195 and 192 in their 3 series as they will face Korea's Jin Ye Oh and Wonho Lee in the bronze medal match. Turkiye's Illayda Tarhan and Yusef Dikec and Serbia's Zorana Arunovic and Damir Mikec will square off in the gold medal match. These two matches will take place on July 30, Tuesday.
Manu would start with 10 and 9 with her first 2 shots, while Rhythm and Arjun had taken a lead and were in the top 3. Rhythm looked to be at the top of her game as the first 4 shots were all 10, while had 58 from his first 6 shots. Manu would hit a hat-trick of 10s but Sarabjot had 3 9's in his first 6 shots, which were forcing the pair out of the top 4 spots. Rhythm and Arjun would climb to the second spot as they kept consistently hitting 10's. Arjun had a slow finish and ended with 97 points which would force him and Rhythm to move to the 4th spot.
They would end up dropping to 5th as Rhythm's last two shots were 9 and ended with 97 points. Sarabjot bounced back in fine fashion as the Indian pairs ended at 4th and 5th respectively.
Manu and Sarbjot hit only 10s to start their second series and moved to the second spot, while Rhythm and Arjun started to struggle a bit. Arjun had an 8 in his second series, which forced the duo to slip down as Rhythm started well.
While Manu had two 9s come in, Sarbjot made it 6 10s on the trot as the duo remained in the second spot. Sarabjot's streak ended as the duo moved down to 3rd. But Manu found form at the right time with 2 10's to move the team back into second spot.
Sarabjot unfortunately hit an 8 despite Manu hitting a few more 10s as they slipped to 4th.
Arjun finished strongly in second series but his team with Rhythm stayed out of the top 4 as we head into the final series.
Manu and Sarabjot hit 2 9s and 2 10s to start the final series and they moved to the top 2 spot. Rhythm and Arjun also slowly moved close to the the top 4 spot. However, Rhythm's poor finish with 3 9s would push them out of contention and finish way below in the rankings.
Sarbajot and Manu ended their final series with 5 10s between them to book their spot for the bronze medal tie.
