London Olympics 2012: Unheralded Vijay Kumar bags silver in 25m Rapid Fire Pistol

Army sharp shooter Vijay Kumar today fought a nerve-wracking battle with five other top marksmen to clinch the silver medal in the men's 25m Rapid Fire Pistol event at the Olympic Games here today.

Kumar beat back the challenge of world champion Alexei Klimov of Russia, Chinese duo of Ding Feng and Zhang Jian and German Christian Reitz in the 40-shot final to finish runner-up in a thrilling finale behind Cuba's Leuris Pupo who shot his way to the gold with a world record equalling score of 34.

The 26-year-old army subedar from Himachal Pradesh found the target 30 times out of 40 attempts in the series comprising eight rounds of five shots each.

This is India's second medal in the ongoing quadrennial extravaganza after fellow marksman Gagan Narang's bronze in the 10m Air Rifle event on July 30. This was also the country's fourth medal in shooting in Olympic history.

The other medal winners are Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore (silver in 2004 Athens) , Abhinav Bindra (gold in 2008 Beijing) besides Narang.

Kumar started with a bang, hitting the target all five times and kept himself in the hunt for a medal by consistently finding the target.

After a perfect five out of five at the start, Kumar, a double gold medallist in the 2010 Commonwealth Games, found the target four times in the second and third series, but missed it twice in the fourth.

He came back strongly by finding the target four times in the next three rounds and assured himself of a silver. In the last round after Pupo shot four to clinch the gold, Kumar seemed to relax a bit and missed three targets.

Gagan Narang wins bronze in 10m air rifle to open India's account

With Alin George and Campriani able to maintain their grip on the top two positions, the competition for the bronze medal had boiled down to a tense contest between the Indian and his Chinese rival over the last few shots in which Narang prevailed.There was stage when Campriani's poor efforts of 9.9 and 9.4 in the eighth and the penultimate series gave Narang a whiff of chance of winning the silver, but the Italian fired a 10.4 in his last shot to dash the Indian's hope of finishing second.Earlier, Narang had kept alive India's hopes by advancing to the medal round after Bindra crashed out.Bindra, who scripted history four years ago by becoming the country's first-ever individual gold medallist in the Olympics, shot 594 out of 600 to finish a shocking 16th out of 47 competitors and lost the golden chance of becoming the world's first shooter to win two successive gold medals at the mega event.However, Narang kept India in the hunt by finishing third with 598, a point behind Campriani and Alin George who both shot an Olympic record-equalling 599 to stand first and second in the qualifying round.