A day of near-misses saw the Indian trio’s team silver in the women’s 50m rifle 3 positions followed by heartbreak in the individual final, where Tilottama Sen lost out on bronze by a single shot
Aichi-Nagoya, Japan: India’s women’s shooting trio of Tilottama Sen, Vidarsa K. Vinod, and Ashi Chouksey secured silver in the 50m rifle 3 positions team event, combining for a total of 1,763-90x — just ten points behind gold medallists China’s 1,773, a score that matched the Asian Games record. Kazakhstan took bronze on 1,754.
Tilottama led the Indian effort with 590-32x, with Vidarsa contributing 588-29x and Ashi Chouksey rounding out the total with 585-29x. The same qualification round doubled as entry for the individual final, and Tilottama’s consistency across the kneeling and prone stages carried her to third place overall, while Vidarsa recovered from a slow start to climb to sixth — both booking India’s two spots in the final. Ashi finished 15th and missed out, though her score still counted in full towards the team’s silver-winning total.
The individual final brought agonising heartbreak for Tilottama. She led South Korea’s Kim Jieun by 0.3 points heading into the final shot for bronze, only for a 9.4 to hand the medal to Kim, who closed with a 10.5. Tilottama finished fourth. Vidarsa’s final ended a shot earlier — a 10.4 saw her through one elimination, edging out Kazakhstan’s Arina Malinovskaya (316.7), before a 10.0 on the next shot ended her campaign, finishing fifth with a total of 327.4.
Kim’s bronze-clinching 348.4 was, remarkably, just 0.1 behind China’s Han Jiayu at that same stage of the competition — Han had reached 348.7 before advancing to a separate two-way shootout for gold against compatriot Zhang Liyuan. That contest came down to one shot with just 0.2 points between them: Han’s 10.5 sealed a new Asian Record of 359.0, with Zhang taking silver on 358.8.
It’s also a second silver of the Games for Vidarsa, who had earlier teamed up with Elavenil Valarivan and Sonam Uttam Maskar for team silver in the women’s 10m air rifle, won behind a world-record Chinese total on September 20.
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