2024 Olympic Games: second gold for China's Lihao Sheng in a thrilling final, a 16-year-old wins the women's match
The eight best air rifle shooters in the world competed in a top-class line-up, with China's Lihao Sheng, world record holder and former mixed gold medallist, as the clear favourite. However, it soon became apparent that the Europeans were also able to keep up, including Victor Lindgren, the surprise world champion from Baku 2023, Italy's Danilo Dennis Sollazzo and the two Croats Petar Gorsa and Marin Maricic. However, Sheng prevailed once again by setting a new Olympic record of 252.2 points. Silver to Lindgren (251.4), bronze to Maricic.
Sheng immediately made off. First eliminated, ranked eighth, was Argentina's Marcelo Julian Gutierrez, the surprise qualifier. Thanks to a couple of less-than-perfect shots by Sheng, India's Arjun Babuta moved up to second. Eliminated was Korea's Daehan Choe, two points lower than Sollazzo.
Gorsa shot a 9.5 and stayed in the competition. He defended himself well with a 10.5 that took him back to fifth place. Moving up to second place was Swede Lindgren. Sixth was Gorsa who stopped with a 9.9 while Sollazzo shot a 10.6. Lindgren was fourth at eleven tenths, Sollazzo shot a 10.3 and Lindgren a 10.6. Sollazzo was eliminated despite a 10.6. Babuta dropped to fourth place and Lindgren climbed to third.
Tomorrow the focus will be on the 50m rifle 3-positions.
The women's 10m air rifle competition was very close: only on the 25th shot, and then on the first second shot, 16-year-old Korean Hyojin Ban managed to defeat China's Yuting Huang.
The bronze medal surprisingly went to Switzerland: 21-year-old Audrey Gogniat had only won silver in 2023 and bronze in 2024 at the European Championships.
2024 Olympic Games: 10m air rifle men, medal winners
| Collocation: | Medal: | Shooter's name: | Country: |
| Gold | 🥇 | Lihao Sheng | China |
| Silver | 🥈 | Victor Lindgren | Sweden |
| Bronze | 🥉 | Miran Maricic | Croatia |
The complete list of men's 10m air rifle results is available here on the official Olympic website.
2024 Olympic Games: 10m air rifle women, medal winners
| Collocation: | Medal: | Name: | Country: |
| Gold | 🥇 | Hyojin Ban | Korea |
| Silver | 🥈 | Yuting Huang | China |
| Bronze | 🥉 | Audrey Gogniat | Switzerland |
Click here for the complete list of women's 10m air rifle results.
2024 Olympic Games: first day of trap men's events
The shooting machine was in motion today on the vast Châteauroux shooting range. After three rounds of 25 clay targets each, Sweden's Rickard Levin-Andersson led the ranking, surprisingly, with Australia's James Willet both at 74, followed by eight athletes at 73 and seven at 72. Legend Giovanni Pellielo, Italian veteran of eight Olympic Games, was sixth after the first 75 clay pigeons with 73. Two zeros in the first two rounds and a clear round of 25/25.
All 30 of the qualifiers can still enter tomorrow's final six, that will start in the late afternoon. The women's event will also start in parallel tomorrow, 30 July, and the final on the following day, 31 July.
The official list of men's results will be supplemented tomorrow with the results of the second part of the event, after which the six best shooters will be finalists.
2024 Olympic Games comment: is equality through mixed competitions also possible in shooting sports?
After three days of intense Olympic competition with air rifles and air pistols, we were able to make a good comparison between the performance of male and female shooters. The declared goal of the IOC was, and is, to equalise the number of women and men at the Olympics to mirror society. Sport is one of the last bastions where men and women compete separately on the basis of flimsy but sometimes understandable arguments. In this respect, even the sport of shooting has changed a lot under slight pressure from the IOC and the ISSF world federation. In order to introduce mixed competitions, which were held for the first time at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, without increasing the total number of shooting events, some popular disciplines were previously removed from the Olympic program, such as the free pistol and the small-bore shooting, both events reserved for men. However, a direct comparison of individual programs with an otherwise equal number of rounds shows that men are still a few rings or tenths of point ahead of women in terms of performance. A competition without gender differentiation would therefore be unfair, even though there have been a few women in Olympic history who managed to break male dominance. However, almost half a century has passed since the silver medal won by US shooter Margaret Murdock-Thompson in Montreal in 1976.
The three mixed events in air rifle, air pistol and skeet at the 2024 Olympics even out the gender differences, mainly because the modified scoring is easier to understand for the audience in the final hall and in front of the TV. The three mixed events will not trigger a crisis in world shooting, but they represent an opportunity and deserve to be expanded. After all, there are still separate rankings for men and women in the other competitions: women's 25m pistol, men's rapid-fire pistol and 50m rifle 3 positions. In particular, the 50m rifle 3 positions event, reduced from 3x40 shots for men to 3x20 shots for women, would offer the opportunity to combine the often equally high results.
In light of the constant threat of being excluded from the Olympic program due to lack of attractiveness (and the cost of shooting ranges), the only option for the shooting sport is to move forward anyway, towards more attractive competitions with clearly understandable rules and a modern image, in which women and men compete together and on an equal footing.
Ulrich Eichstädt
2024 Olympic Games: snapshots of the 3rd day of events
Everything you need to know about shooting at the 2024 Olympics
Here you will find the complete and constantly updated program of all Olympic shooting events in Chateauroux.
All links and information on the shooting events at the 2024 Olympics in Châteauroux.
