China’s Zhu Qinan broke a world record to win his country’s third gold medal of the Olympic shooting competition yesterday.
Teenager Zhu dominated his rivals in the 10-meter air rifle, scoring 599 of a possible 600 points in the qualifying round to smash the Olympic record of 596 set in 1996. Zhu, 19, then broke the final world record as well with 702.7 points. His compatriot Li Jie got the silver medal with a score of 701.3.
China’s strong start to the shooting competition has backed up the confident predictions of their officials, who had said before coming to Athens that their team should win up to 10 of the 17 shooting medals up for grabs.
The two Chinese shooters hugged each other warmly after the final shots. Their ice-cold stares at the target during the finals melted into wide smiles as they waved to the large crowd of Chinese fans cheering loudly.
Zhu, competing in his first Olympics, told journalists: “I didn’t know I had broken the world record until you told me of it.”
Jozef Gonci of Slovakia won the bronze medal with 697.4 points. Gonci had finished the qualifying round in fourth and moved ahead of India’s Abhinav in the finals. He slipped back to fourth behind South Korea’s Cheon Min-ho on the penultimate shot but recovered with a bull’s-eye on the final.
India’s Abhinav, on target for a bronze in the qualifying with 597 points, slumped to seventh place with just 97.6 points in the 10-round final, well behind Zhu’s pace-setting 103.7.
American Jason Parker, who had set the previous world record of 702.5 last year, finished in eighth place with 694.5 points. The previous Olympic record of 596 was set at the 1996 Games in Atlanta by Austria’s Wolfram Waibel.
Earlier yesterday, Australia’s Suzanne Balogh won the Olympic women’s trap shooting after battling shifting winds on a mountain-top range outside Athens.
Inspired by a former coach who once said she was “too old and too talentless”, Balogh dominated both the final and qualifying rounds despite turbulent winds that sometimes sent the clay pigeons leaping or sinking in unpredictable directions. Maria Quintanal of Spain won the silver medal with 84 points and Lee Bo-na took the bronze medal with 83, narrowly beating 17-year-old American high school student Whitly Loper who was fourth.
Balogh had led after the qualifying round, hitting on 66 of a possible 75 as powerful gusts that knocked over tables and blew down banners at the Markopoulo shooting range kept down scores. She followed with 22 of 25 in the final for a total score of 88.
An agriculture protection officer from New South Wales, Balogh won the double trap world cup in 2001 and finished third at the world cup final in 2001. She was fifth at the 2003 world championships and sixth in 2001.
Her victory was sealed one round before the finish and unleashed roars of joy from the large Australian following who had cheered Adam Vella’s bronze medal in the men’s trap shooting on Sunday. Loper, who is naturally right-handed, was born blind in her right eye. The high school junior from Indian Springs, Alabama. taught herself to shoot left-handed.
Loper made a furious rally in the final, hitting the first 13 targets, after starting in fourth position, four behind Balogh. She was in second place and in contention for a silver medal before faltering at the end of the competition. Germany’s Susanne Kiermayer had entered the final round in third place but missed eight targets in the difficult conditions to finish fifth.
