No medal for Vijay in ISSF World Cup

New Delhi: London Olympic silver medallist Vijay Kumar could not live up to the billing as he failed to qualify for the finals of the 25-metre rapid fire pistol event at the ISSF World Cup in Changwon, Korea on Monday.

The other two Indians participating in the event, Pemba Tamang and Harpreet Singh, too failed to qualify for the medal round. While Vijay was placed a disappointing 18th in the qualification stage, Tamang and Harpreet did a shade better, finishing 13th and 16th respectively. Vijay shot 278 in stage 1 and 286 in stage 2 for a total of 564 with the help of 11 x, which was not good enough to take the 27-year-old army shooter from Hamirpur to the medal round. Pemba Tamang totalled 569 after scoring 280 and 289 in the two stages. He had 16 x to his credit. Harpreet had a cumulative score of 566 after shooting 280 and 286 with the help of 17 x. Germany`s Christian Reitz clinched the gold medal while the silver went to Yuehong Li of China. Russia`s Leonid Ekimov bagged the bronze medal after prevailing over countryman Alexander Alifirenko in the shoot-off. Rahi Sarnobat had last Friday scripted history by becoming the first Indian pistol shooter to clinch a gold medal in the ISSF World Cup when she pipped local hope Kyeongae Kim 8-6 in the final of the 25m sports pistol event. A day later, Prakash Nanjappa won a bronze in the men`s 10m air pistol event. Prakash shot 180.2 points to outgun 2010 World Champion Tomoyuki Matsuda of Japan, who finished fourth with 158.7 points. But disappointment was in store for Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra and the likes of Heena Sidhu, Tejaswini Sawant, Lajja Gauswamy, Meena Kumari and Annu Raj Singh. PTI