China secured the first gold medal of the Paris 2024 Olympics as their teenaged world champions Huang Yuting, 17, and 19-year-old Sheng Lihao earned a 16-12 victory over their courageous 24-year-old Republic of Korea opponents Keum Jihyeon and Park Hajun.
And shooting sport's traditional place within the Games was observed earlier as the first medal of the Paris Games went to Kazakhstan’s Alexandra Le and Islam Satpayev, who defeated Germany’s world No.1 Anna Janssen and Maximilian Ulbrich 17-5 in the bronze-medal match, securing their country’s first Olympic shooting medal since the 1996 Atlanta Games.
All the medallists are pictured at the ceremony, with Republic of Korea left, China centre and the Kazakhstan pair right.
The final provided a fitting contest to produce such a historic result.
The Korean pair stubbornly refused to allow their rivals to move clear, even though after 11 of the scheduled 16 rounds Huang and Sheng – who now has gold after becoming the youngest ever Olympic shooting sport medallist by taking 10m air rifle silver at the Tokyo Games aged 16 – led 14-8, needing to win just one more round to secure the winning total.
But the Chinese pair had to wait for three more rounds to fulfil their Paris ambitions as Keum, gold medallist at this year’s Baku World Cup, and Park, who earned bronze in the men’s event at that same World Cup, kept their collective nerve.
The Koreans won the 12th round of shooting with a combined total of 21.0 to pull the score back to 10-14, at which point China called a one-minute time-out.
Korea had used their time-out earlier after going 6-2 down after four rounds, but their coach appeared to use this second opportunity to better effect as he joked with both his charges.
Whatever the psychology, it was the Koreans who responded best as competition resumed in an atmosphere charged with tension at the French national shooting centre in Chateauroux.
The 13th round saw China score 20.7, but two 10.7s – just 0.02 shy of perfection – enabled the Republic of Korea to tip the score back to 12-14. Gold medal game on…
Another superb score of 21.1 from the Koreans in the next round was not enough to stave off defeat, however, as their young rivals showed ageless composure to register a combined total of 21.5 that turned their morning golden, with Huang, the youngest athlete in action, scoring a 10.8 and Sheng registering 10.7.
The stuff of world – and now Olympic champions.
China thus retained the Olympic title having won this competition when it made its Olympic debut in Tokyo three years ago thanks to Yang Qian and Yang Haoran.
Asked how he coped with the pressure of expectation upon him, Sheng responded: “The last Olympics was my first Games and, for me, it was very tense. The technical aspects were far from mature. Every game, every match, is a good opportunity to develop in my career.
“Winning the gold in this Games is the result of our hard effort but luck also plays a certain role. We will only get better from now.
“It is a great pleasure to win. What you do exceeds your words. After completing this competition, I believe my work is already done, but the result is not going to have an impact on my individual competition. I will continue to focus on what I need to do.”
Asked whether he practises keeping a lower heartbeat to help him during competition he responded: “I don’t have any secrets. Sometimes it is out of control. For a while I tried various ways to keep myself calm and lower my heart rate, but it wasn’t working very well. I just tried to stay focused on the competition itself."
Huang, speaking about the way in which the Republic of Korea had begun to catch up with them in the second half of the final, commented:
“I was quite tense and telling myself I must focus on my movement and the competition to give myself positive energy.
“Perhaps on the surface we seemed calm but deep inside we were very nervous.
“Our coach was trying to remind me not to pay too much attention to the final score and to focus on my actual movement.
“This medal is the culmination of all the practice we have done over the last period. It also marks a new start. I must remind myself of my approaching 18th birthday.
“I’m very pleased to have won the first gold. At the end of last year and during winter training, I was in a low mood. But I exerted a lot of effort to adjust my performance to face any pressure head on. I believe the best mentality is to accept whatever pressure is thrown at me."
Park commented: “I’m very happy to have won silver. I guess we were not able to overcome the Chinese athletes but we are very satisfied with our silver medal.”
Keum added: “Before this Olympic Games we met up with a lot of Chinese athletes. I am very respectful of them. They are great athletes and did a great job of getting the gold, but I thought we had a great effort to get silver, so I am very satisfied with the result.”
Earlier Le, 20, and 25-year-old Islam Satpayev producing a dominant performance to claim the first medal of the Games and put their nation back on the map in terms of shooting sport medals at the Games 28 years after Sergey Belyayev's two silvers and Vladimir Vokhmyanin's bronze in Atlanta.
After drawing level at 4-4 Germany lost the next round to go 4-6 down, at which point they called a time-out. But it was the Kazakh pair who appeared to benefit most from the break as they produced a combined total of 21.6 – just 0.02 off the perfect score – to push the score to 8-4, and then 10-4.
Janssen and Ulbrich managed to halve the next round as both teams totalled 21.3, but thereafter it was all Kazakhstan as they won three successive rounds.
Kazakhstan’s Satpayev said: “It was my first Olympic Games, and today I got, for me, my record in the qualification. In the final, I showed a good job, so I’m so excited. It was really close, but today, for us, was a big win.”
His team-mate Le added:
“I am really happy. I was really nervous because this was my first Olympic Games. If I have the bronze medal, for me, it’s the first (big win) for me.”