By IANS,
New Delhi : Indian shooter Gagan Narang won the gold and surpassed the air rifle men’s world record at an Olympic test event held at Hannover in Germany.
Narang’s score of 704.3 was 1.2 more than the existing world record of 703.1 set by Austrian shooter Thomas Farnik in the World Cup finals held at Grenada in 2006.
Gagan shot a score of 599 in the qualifications and then followed it up with an excellent score of 105.3 in the final round Wednesday. In the sixth qualification series he shot 9.9 which prevented him from obtaining a perfect score of 600/600.
“By any standard this is a wonderful performance and it is above the world record score. The range authorities were naturally happy with this highest ever score made by anyone in their range and I feel it might take a lot of time before anyone can break this record,” said national coach Sunny Thomas.
“I am happy he is training and shaping very well for the Beijing Olympics. There is a lot of difference between shooting a high score in a training session than that from shooting it in a competition and, that too competing against shooters who have qualified for the Beijing Olympics. I am very sure that this will boost Gagan’s confidence and inspire him to shoot a great score in the Olympics,” he added.