China win first gold medal of Paris Olympics 2024, beat South Korean in mixed 10m Air Rifle final

Kazakhstan pair ends 28-year Olympic shooting drought at Paris.

China secured the first gold medal of the Paris Olympics 2024 as their teenaged world champions Huang Yuting, 17, and 19-year-old Sheng Lihao earned a 16-12 victory in 10m Air rifle mixed team 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 Olympics 2024 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 Olympics shooting medal since the 1996 Atlanta Games.

The final of 10m Air rifle mixed team at Paris Olympics 2024 provided a fitting contest to produce such a historic result. The Korean pair stubbornly refused to allow their rivals to move clear.

Even 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 Olympics 2024 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.

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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 mode was 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.

Earlier Le, 20, and 25-year-old Islam Satpayev producing a dominant performance to claim the first medal of the Paris Olympics 2024 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 at Paris Olympics 2024.

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