Kazakhstan's Yelizaveta Bezrukova and Konstantin Malinovskiy topped the podium today at the Asian Rifle/Pistol Cup, claiming victory in the 10m air rifle mixed team final in Bangkok, Thailand.
It was a fine margin to make it into the final as they finished just 0.1 points ahead of Paris 2024 Olympic bronze medallists in the event Alexandra Le and Islam Satpayev.
With both teams representing Kazakhstan, only their best-performing duo could compete for gold.
Their opponents in that final were Ho Xiu Yi and Tang Hong An of Singapore who finished just 0.5 points behind Bezrukova and Malinovskiy in qualification.
Kazakhstan would prevail by a margin of 17 to 9, buoyed particularly by some high scores courtesy of Malinovskiy in the single shots and great consistency from Bezrukova across the whole competition.
In the first of the bronze medal matches, Republic of Korea's Choo Byounggil and Park Hahyanggi defeated Anang Febrian and Dominique Rachmawati Karini of Indonesia 17-9; while the second bronze went to Misaki Nobata and Naoya Okada of Japan following their 17-11 defeat of Sung Yu-Ting and Sung Chia-Yen of Chinese Taipei.
Despite defeat in the senior event, Singapore would win the 10m air rifle mixed team junior title.
Having dominated in qualification, it was unsurprising to see Kwan Ing Zaccheus Chong and Loveley Ng make light work of Qatari pair Almaha Mishal A B Al-Ali and Abdulrahman Ahmad S B Al-Sulaiti, with the score in the final finishing 16-4.
In a close contest, Seyedehmohanna Seyedpourshektaei and Mohammad Mahdi Tahsebiabdar of Iran defeated the pair of Thailand's Chompunut Phengsukuri and Warawut Sai-Utat 17-13 for the bronze medal.