Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Manavjit Singh Sandhu earned himself an Olympic quota place when the ace marksman shot 144 to win the silver in the men's trap event on the last day of the World Cup at Kerrville, United States.
Manavjit shot a series of 24, 24, 23 and followed it with last two perfect rounds of 25, 25 in the qualifications to total 121 and then he shot 23 in the final for an aggregate of 144 that earned him the silver medal and a place in the Beijing Olympics.
Manavjit won the Olympic quota place as Alexey Alipov of Russia, the gold medallist in this event, had already won the quota place for Russia at the last year's World Cup in Americana, Brazil.
The other two Indians in the event, however, were not so impressive with Anwer Sultan finishing 46th with a score of 109 (21, 22, 20, 22, 24) and Bireendeep Sodhi finishing 53rd with 107 (22, 19, 19, 23, 24).
Athens Olympic gold medallist Alipov finished on top with a score of 146 (122 + 24). The bronze medal was decided in a shoot-off between Dominic Grazioli from the United States of America and Michael Diamond from Australia. Both shot 119 in the qualification round and then had identical final score of 23 forcing a shoot-off, which eventually was decided in favour of Grazioli, seven to six.
The ISSF World Cup shotgun series 2006 will be continued in Cairo, Egypt from May 16 to 25.
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