Asian Games 2026: India men, women win skeet bronze

The Indian men's and women's skeet shooting teams picked up bronze medals but individual podiums eluded them as two of the three in final finished fourth in the Asian Games on Wednesday.

After three days of qualification rounds, the Indian trio of Raiza Dhillon, Maheshwari Chauhan and Parinaaz Dhaliwal finished with a combined score of 331 to finish third behind gold medallists China (357) and Kazakhstan (336) in the women's team event.

It was the first ever Asian Games medal in the women's team skeet event for India.

Raiza and Parinaaz also made the individual finals but could not fetch a podium finish. While Raiza ended fourth after firing a score of 23, Parinaaz finished bottom of the heap with a total of 8.

In the men's competition, Anantjeet Singh Naruka (119), veteran Mairaj Ahmad Khan (116) and Bhavtegh Singh Gill (111) snared the men's team bronze with a total score of 346.

Of the three, Asian Championships gold-medallist Anantjeet, who was also a silver-winner at the Games' previous edition, qualified for the individual final but could not fetch a medal.

Anantjeet fired 25 in the final, paying heavily for a couple of missed shots in the first series.

Earlier, Parinaaz and Raiza both collected 111 points out of a possible 125, while Maheshwari logged 109 points in the women's team event.

The skeet event has each shooter trying to get the maximum of 125 allocated points.

Disappointment in individual final

However, it was a disappointing performance in the individual skeet finals for the Indians.

Anantjeet finished fourth in men's skeet with 25 hits, while Raiza (23) also finished in a similar position in women's skeet.

Parinaaz, meanwhile, was the first Indian to exit the women's skeet final, shooting a mere 8 before the eliminations began.

Major medal miss in women's 10m air pistol

Elsewhere in the women's 10m air pistol team event, gold favourites India finished a disappointing fourth.

The trio of Manu Bhaker (579), Esha Singh (572), and Suruchi Phogat (568) shot a combined total of 1719. They were level with bronze medallists Vietnam, but lost out on count of inner tens.

Double Olympic medallist Bhaker was the only Indian to make it to the individual final with Singh finishing 15th and Phogat finishing even lower at the 26th spot.

Bhaker, however, never really looked in the rhythm in the individual final. She survived two eliminations before eventually finishing fifth with a score of 181.1 as India ended medalless in one of their strongest shooting events.

(With inputs from PTI)