NEW DELHI, Sept. 29 -- Esha Singh has been through this, sort of. Long before she boarded the flight to Japan for her second Asian Games, coach Ronak Pandit put the 21-year-old through the wringer. Multiple shoot-offs, gun malfunction, missed transport, waking up with a fever, noisy crowd, blaring music, shooting with someone else's weapon-they had figured out all scenarios. "We did our best to dismantle her in training. We tested her in every way we could. We broke her rhythm," Ronak, the 25m pistol high-performance coach, told HT from Aichi. All that work, spread across shooting ranges in Delhi, Bhopal, and Dehradun paid off on Monday with the world No.1 repeating her silver medal from the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games after surviving four of the five shoot-offs in a high quality final at the General Shooting Gallery in Aichi. The 21-year-old, one of India's best bets for a medal considering her superb form coming into the competition, aggregated 38 hits with China's Xiao Jiaruixuan. The duo equalled the Games record, set by China's Liu Rui at the Hangzhou Games three years back. North Korea's Kim Hyon Suk was third with 34 hits. "I am very happy with her technical execution. The qualification was below-par for us but she bounced back remarkably in the final," Ronak said. Shooting from Firing Point C, Esha started with a perfect 5/5 in her opening series to take the early lead followed by Kim and China's Shang Kaiyan. She nailed four of the next five and maintained the lead but managed just three hits in the next sequence, conceding her top position to Xiao Jiaruixuan. The Chinese proved impossible to dislodge thereafter even though Esha and Kim tried their best to keep up. Esha crept up to joint lead after the fourth series, with both she and Xiao nailing 16 hits each at that stage. The North Korean then hit all five while Esha and Xiao missed one shot each, which brought all three level at the top. Esha dropped to third after missing two shots in the sixth series while Xiao and Kim took the top two spots. She dropped outside the medal bracket with a poor series to total 26, two shots behind Vietnam's Trinh Thu Vinh and Xiao. It looked like another disappointing outing for the shooters but Esha survived elimination with a perfect 5/5 to get inside the top three and assure India of the medal, a solitary point behind Xiao and Kim. A 2021 Tokyo Olympics bronze medallist and a 2022 world champion, Xiao shot with sublime calm throughout the final, patiently waiting for her turn while Esha and Kim engaged in three shoot-offs. The two were tied at 34 after the sixth series, forcing the first shoot off. Both got three hits apiece to force another shoot-off. It looked like it was going Esha's way, as she held a one-shot advantage with a shot to go when the match was stopped. When the proceedings commenced, Esha missed while Kim hit to draw level and force another shoot-off. Another stoppage by technical officials followed but Esha got three hits against Kim's two to get into the final two, trailing Xiao by a point going into the final five. "The first shoot-off was down to the Range Officer's inexperience as he stopped the series at the fourth shot. Then, someone forgot to reset the stopwatch which meant the shooters had to reload all over again. I'd say it took an effort of 6-7 shoot-offs from both the shooters and credit to them that they ran each other close," the coach explained. Esha and Xiao were tied at 38 hits after the ensuing series to force a gold medal shoot-off. Both got four hits each to force a second shoot-off - fifth of the final - where the Indian came up short by one hit. "Esha's first shot in the second shoot-off in the final wasn't registered because she didn't shoot in the stipulated time frame of three seconds. It's not as if the other shooter outshot her, but we can't use that as an excuse," Ronak added. Earlier, Esha qualified for the eight-shooter final in the eighth spot with 580 hits while Paris Olympics double medallist Manu Bhaker and 2018 Asian Games champion Rahi Sarnobat failed to make the cut. Manu was 11th while Rahi ended 30th, which also meant that India drew a blank in the team standings. Having won an individual bronze at the 2025 World Championships and 2026 Asian Championships and gold medals at the Munich and Hangzhou World Cups, Esha was among India's best bets at the Games, and a medal at the end of the day justified her top billing. Meanwhile, it turned out to be one of Manu's most forgettable multi-discipline campaigns, as she had failed to medal in the 10m air pistol event earlier in the competition....