Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra described Naresh Sharma, who finished fifth in the 50m Free Rifle Prone shooting at the Paralympic Games in Beijing, "very inspiring" but rued the lack of coverage to the event by the Indian media.
"This is a very creditable performance. My congratulations to Naresh. His determination has always been very inspiring. I wish him all the luck for the future," Bindra said in his message to the marksman.
"It's a pity that there has been no coverage of our Paralympic athletes. I know in countries like USA and Germany they are given equal importance as their Olympians," he added.
Debutant Sharma shot a series of 99, 99, 99, 95, 97 and 98 to finish with a qualification score of 587 which was good enough for the Delhi-based Arjuna Awardee to qualify for the finals.
In the finals, Sharma shot 10.2, 10.4, 10.6, 10.4, 10.7, 9.4, 9.9, 9.5, 10.1, 10.0 to register a total score of 101.2.
"My performance is good considering the fact that this is my first Paralympic Games in a rifle event. However, I am not much satisfied as I think I could have won a medal easily had I shot a point more in the qualifications," Sharma said.
"I did not get much support during the Games as no coach or anyone from a shooting background was there with me. I would like to thank my sponsor Naveen Jindal for all his financial support over the years which has helped me to reach so far," he added.
The gold in this event was won by Jonas Jacobsson of Sweden with a score of 695.8 (592+103.8), silver by Zhang Cuiping of China with a score of 692.9 (590+102.9) while another Chinese Dong Chao won the bronze with a score of 689.3 (586+103.3).
