Victor Lindgren of Sweden earned his first global title at the age of 20 as he won the men’s 10m air rifle gold medal at the ISSF World Championships in Baku.
And he could hardly believe it.
After earning victory with a score of 251.3 points ahead of China's 27-year-old Tokyo 2020 bronze medallist Haoran Yang, who totalled 250.6, Lindgren commented:
"I think it is crazy. When I woke up today I didn’t think about a quota place.
"The scores were very high in the first relay and I shot in the second, so I had nothing in my mind about being in the finals first of all, but I did a good job and in the last five shots I had good moments.
"In the final it was a case of just do my job and see what happens, this will take me on, it's very good."
Bronze went to Frantisek Smetana of the Czech Republic.
Zalan Pekler won two of the six World Cups at which the event featured, at Lima and Baku, and he completed his season by earning gold at the World Cup Final in Doha.
“I am still shaking a little bit because this final was really nerve-wracking”, the 23-year-old Hungarian told ISSF TV after a competition where he only took over the lead with four shots remaining, finishing on 251.2 ahead of Serbia’s Lazar Kovacevic on 249.4.
Bronze went to 22-year-old European Games bronze medallist Jiri Privratsky of the Czech Republic.
Haoran, who had won this title as an 18-year-old at the 2014 World Championships – in the same year that he won the Youth Olympic title in Nanjing - had seemed poised to win but unexpectedly failed to make the final three.
Japan’s Naoya Okada won the first World Cup event in Jakarta, with India’s Rudrankksh Patil being victorious in Cairo and Sheng Lihao of China taking the honours at the Bophal edition.
At the final World Cup of the season for this discipline, at Rio de Janeiro, gold was claimed by Italy’s Danilo Sollazzo.