Following anxious moments, India's Mairaj Ahmad Khan lost out in the race to qualify for the men's skeet semi-finals at the Rio Games on Saturday, finishing in ninth position. The top six shooters advanced to the semis. Earlier in the day, India's Gurpreet Singh had finished just outside the top six, missing out on a spot in the final of the 25m rapid fire pistol event.
Mairaj found himself in a five-way tie for the fifth spot with 121 points at the end of the stipulated five rounds and tumbled out of the qualifying bracket following a shoot-off.
In the second day of qualifying, he started with a perfect 25 in the fourth series, following it up with a 24 in the final series, seeming almost certain to make the cut. Of the five shooters involved in the shoot-off, only two -- Gabriele Rossetti (Italy) and Jesper Hansen (Denmark) -- made the semi-finals.
With a score of 72 in 75 shots, Mairaj had finished in 10th position at the end of the first day of qualifying. The skeet qualifying round is staged over two days with three rounds of 25 shots each on the first day and the remaining two rounds of a total of 50 shots on the second.
Earlier on Saturday, Gurpreet narrowly missed making it to the final in 25m rapid fire pistol. Firing a total of 292 points -- 97, 98, 97 -- over three series, he finished in seventh position.
Gurpreet had ended in 10th position with a score of 289 from 300 shots on Friday.
In the qualifying round held over two days, six series of 10 shots each are fired, divided into three series on each day. The top six shooters at the end of the second qualifying stage on Saturday made the final.
This is the event in which Vijay Kumar had won silver at the London Olympics.
Gurpreet, who took to shooting after joining the army, had won two gold medals at the 2010 Commonwealth Games