Asian Games: Kynan Chenai wins bronze medal in men’s trap individual competition after leading team to historic gold

Hangzhou: Having topped the standings in the qualifying stage, India’s Kynan Chenai could not ride the momentum and could manage only a bronze medal in the Men’s Trap Individual competition at the Asian Games here on Sunday.

Kynan had raised hopes of winning India’s first gold medal in Men’s Trap Individual since 1978 when Randhir Singh had bagged the gold in Bangkok. Kynan performed superbly along with Zoravar Singh Sandhu and Prithviraj Tondaiman to win a historic gold medal in the men’s Trap Team competition.

This was India’s first gold medal in the Trap Team competition, having won silver in three successive Asian Games from 1998 in Bangkok, 2002 in Busan and 2006 in Doha. It also completed a full set of medals for the veteran Zoravar Singh Sandhu, who had won a silver medal with Manavjit Singh Sandhu and Mansher Singh in 1998 and a bronze medal with the same partners in the 2010 edition in Guangzhou.

With this, India completed a highly successful campaign in shooting with 22 medals in all — seven gold, nine silver and six bronze medals. This is India’s best-ever medal haul in shooting competitions and overtakes by a huge margin the 13 medals the country had won in 2006 in Doha.

In Hangzhou, India finished second behind China who topped the table with 29 medals including 16 gold medals.Kazakhstan finished third with 10 medals including three gold.

So, Kynan must have been quite confident after helping India bag the gold medal in the Team competition.

However, things didn’t go as planned for him and he made some mistakes and had to be satisfied with a silver medal as he ended the competition with a score of 32 in the final to finish behindeventual gold medallist, Qi Ying of China (46) and Talat Al-Rashidii of Kuwait, who bagged the silver medal with a score of 45.

Keynan had topped the standings at the end of the qualifying rounds with a score of 122 out of a possible 125. There was a tie between four shooters including Al-Rashidi and Sandhu among them. Zoravar overcame their challenge in the shoot-off to finish second behind his teammate.

With their shooters at No.1 and 2 position, the Indians went into the final with confidence, However, he ended up being eliminated second among six finalists and finished fifth.

Kynan maintained his composure as the organisers took their time arranging equipment. Jynan made some mistakes in the early phases in the final and then failed to recover.

–IANS