The Paris 2024 shooting sport competition that starts tomorrow at the French national shooting centre in Chateauroux will offer a rich and diverse spectacle in terms of geographical involvement, age range and rivalry.
As the ISSF pushes on into what its President, Luciano Rossi, has described as a “new era” – 128 years after the sport was one of nine involved at the first modern Games in Athens – its athletes are ready to present a series of compelling competitions to the watching world.
Traditionally the first medals of the Olympics are presented in shooting sport and Paris 2024 will see that tradition maintained with the awards to the top three finishers in tomorrow’s 10m air rifle mixed team event, where the final starts at 10.30 CEST.
A total of 340 athletes from 81 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) are due to take part, as well as an additional two members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Refugee Team - Edilio Centeno Nieves, who will compete in the 10m air pistol men, and 10m air rifle women competitor Luna Solomon, who also took part in the Tokyo 2020 Games.
China, who topped the Tokyo 2020 medal table with 11 medals including four golds, and India – whose athletes are seeking a first shooting sport gold since Abhinav Bindra won India’s first ever individual Olympic gold at the Beijing 2008 Games – are fielding the largest teams of 21.
Following the introduction of mixed team events at the Tokyo 2020 Games the 10m air pistol and 10m air rifle mixed team events will be accompanied for the first time by a skeet mixed team event, which replaces the trap mixed team event held three years ago in the Japanese capital.
The age-span of competitors at these Games, where shooting sport competition will run from July 27 to August 5, is unrivalled.
At one extreme - Mohammed Beyranvand of Iran, aged 15, who was a shock qualifier for Paris 2024 when he won a shoot-off in the men’s trap at the Asian Olympic qualifier.
Beyranvand will not turn 16 until August 28 this year and is due to become the fourth youngest athlete ever to compete in Olympic shooting sport after the previous involvement of three 15-year-olds, the youngest of whom was Hungary’s Oliver Gaspar, who competed in the 10m air rifle at the 1988 Seoul Olympics aged 15 years 252 days.
The same event, Trap Men, will see the involvement of the oldest shooting sport athlete at these Games, Venezuela’s Leonel Martinez, aged 60, who was born on September 18, 1963.
At 41, Spain’s Alberto Fernandez will travel to Paris with realistic hopes of adding an individual title to the trap mixed gold he took at Tokyo 2020 along with Fatima Galvez.
World champion in 2010 and 2018, Fernandez is world-ranked No.1 after a season in which has won gold at the Cairo World Cup and European Championships.
Meanwhile another 41-year-old Olympic gold medallist, Croatia’s Giovanni Cernogoraz - who won the individual trap men title at the London 2012 Games - is also heading to Chateauroux with excellent prospects, having won the European and world titles last year.
In the trap women event Chinese Taipei’s highly experienced 43-year-old Lin Yi-chun is due to contest her fifth Olympics knowing that the sport still offers her golden opportunities.
Last year the three-times Asian champion won a second world title in Baku 21 years after winning her first, in the double trap. Yi-chun scored 40, beating Italy’s London 2012 gold medallist Jessica Rossi – another strong contender in Paris - by one shot.
But she will be well aware of the threat posed to her by the world No.1, Spain’s Fatima Galvez, and the defending champion, Slovakia’s 40-year-old Zuzana Rehak Stefecekova, who beat Galvez to gold at the Lonato World Cup.
The theme of young and old will also be highlighted in the 10m air pistol women, where India will look to 22-year-old Manu Bhaker, also picked for the 25m pistol, and 20-year-old Rhythm Sangwan, world-ranked No.3 in this event.
But this pair can expect serious opposition from the two vastly more experienced athletes - Serbia’s 37-year-old world No. 1 Zorana Arunovic, who set a world record of 246.9 points in 2017, seven years after winning the world title, and Austria’s 42-year-old Syvia Steiner.
History is due to be made in this event tomorrow as Georgia’s 55-year-old Nino Salukvadze contests her 10th consecutive Olympics – a record.
More history could be made in Paris as Vincent Hancock of the United States seeks a fourth Olympic skeet men title after his victories at the Beijing 2008, London 2012 and Tokyo 2020 Games.
Hancock will seek a second gold in Paris in tandem with Austen Smith, the 22-year-old with whom he won the world skeet mixed team title last year.
In the skeet women event, Italy’s hopes of a medal are high thanks to the progress this season of Diana Bacosi 40, who took gold at the Rio 2016 Games and silver at Tokyo 2020, and who won the world title in 2019 and 2022.
The 50m rifle 3 positions women will be one of the most keenly anticipated contests of the programme in Paris, with a big focus on India’s world record holder Sift Kaur Samra and the two women currently ranked world No.1 and No.2, respectively, Britain’s Seonaid McIntosh and Germany’s Anna Janssen.
The 25m pistol women event will also be extraordinarily competitive given that both the Republic of Korea athletes have broken the world record this year.
Yang Jiin, 21, set a world record of 41 at the Asian Championships and Olympic Qualifying event in Jakarta on January 11, overtaking the mark of 40 set in 2019 by Hungary’s Veronika Major and equalled last year by Germany’s Doreen Vennekamp in winning her first world title.
At the Baku World Cup, where the 25m pistol was among the events where two finals were staged, Yang won the first with another score of 41. But her mark remained as a world junior record only after the second final where her compatriot Kim Yeji, 31, won gold with 42.
Home athlete Camille Jedrzejewski will also have big chances in this event, while in the men’s 25m rapid-fire pistol France fields the defending champion, Jean Quiquampoix, and the man who has won two world silvers since the Tokyo 2020 Games, Clement Bessaguet.
China, as one might expect, have some outstanding contenders for Olympic gold.
In the men’s 50m rifle 3 positions Liu Yukun competes with the word LUCKY emblazoned on one leg of his shooting outfit – but there has been nothing lucky about the way that this 27-year-old showman has forced his way back to the top of his event this year.
Yukun is heading for his first Olympics in Paris as a favourite having set two world records in the space of three days at the ISSF World Cup in Baku.
China’s Sheng Lihao, who created Olympic history in Tokyo three years ago by becoming the youngest shooting sport medallist – he earned 10m air rifle silver aged 16 years 233 days – looks on for further landmark achievements at the Games.
Sheng, now 19, won the last two ISSF World Cups of the season, at Baku and Munich, regaining the world record in the latter event with a score of 254.5.
As in the men’s version of the 10m air rifle event, Chinese hopes are hugely high in the women’s competition.
Reigning world champion Han Jiayu, 22, has had another impressive season, setting a qualifying world record of 636.3 at the Baku World Cup in May.
But her exploits have been outdone this year by 17-year-old team-mate Huang Yuting, who beat her in the Chinese trials and set a junior qualifying world record of 635.3 en route to taking gold at the final World Cup of the season at Munich in June, when Han took bronze.
In the 10m air pistol men China will be represented by world champion Zhang Bowen and Xi Yue, who won gold at the Baku World Cup ahead of Germany’s world No.1 Robin Walter.
China won the first Olympic 10m air rifle mixed team event when mixed team events made their debut at the Tokyo 2020 Games thanks to Yang Qian and Yang Haoran, neither of whom are on the team for Paris 2024.
But the Chinese challenge for another gold could hardly be stronger given the recent record of the two teenagers currently charged with this task – Huang and Sheng travel to the Games as world champions.
China will also make a strong defence of the 10m air pistol mixed team title earned in Tokyo. Since partnering Pang Wei to victory in Japan, Jiang Ranxin, now 24, has become world 10m air rifle women champion, and she will defend the mixed title in Paris with new partner Xie Yu, also 24, individual winner at this year’s World Cup in Baku.