Chateauroux: Sarabjot Singh sat on the chair just behind his little area of chasing perfection, his head flung back for a split second. A few lanes away, Arjun Singh Cheema sat still for minutes with his head bowed.

In the two images of Indians at the exact same moments a few metres apart lay one common pinch: missing a final spot, which, at varied points in their respective 60-shot sequence, seemed within grasp.

It could be argued which is more painful, but it certainly did seem so for Sarabjot who missed a spot in the men’s 10m air pistol final by an inner 10, finishing ninth in the qualification round from where eight men advanced.

Sarabjot and Germany’s Robin Walter were tied in the same score of 577, but the latter went through as the eighth man on account of one more X (17 to the Indian’s 16). Had they been unseparated there too, the last card would’ve been the differentiator.

Once he got up to arrange his equipment, Sarabjot kept glancing at the scoreboard. It wouldn’t change. He stood in front of the waiting media but did not wish to speak. The man from Punjab with a zest for fast cars suddenly stood numbingly still, unable to wrap his head around what hit him.

“Naturally, he is down. What can I tell him in such a situation?” national pistol coach Samaresh Jung said.

Sarabjot, who shone at the Olympic selection trials earlier this year, was coming into his first Olympics after winning gold in the Munich World Cup last month. The pressure of the Games, however, seemingly got to him at the start which wasn’t the brightest. Even though he fought back in the latter series after a few words with Jung, the elusive seat in the final eluded him.

“He started a bit shaky, and I was trying to give him some confidence. He came back well but it wasn’t to be,” Jung said.

It was the opposite with Cheema, who started well and remained in the top eight, before a wild 7 in the fourth series threw him off. He took a pause after that shot, engaging in a rather lengthy chat with foreign coach Munkhbayar Dorjsuren. But he never recovered from that, ending 18th.

“I couldn’t control a few things in my mind out there, I admit that,” Cheema said. “I hope to learn from this.”

Both Sarabjot and Cheema will have to recover quickly for the 10m pistol mixed team events.