The Chinese shooter won the 50m Rifle Prone Men final and an Olympic Quota Place at the last shot, overtaking the qualification’s leader Uptagrafft (USA) by 0.2 points. 58-year old Stenvaag of Norway finished 4th, 3 points far from his seventh Olympic Qualification.
China’s Wang Weiyi won an odd-defying match, beating USA’s Eric Uptagrafft at the last shot by 2 tenths of a point, earning an Olympic Quota Place for his country.
USA’s Eric Uptagrafft, 45-year old, an experienced shooter who competed in twelve ISSF World Cup final rounds in this event in his career, started the medal match in the lead with an excellent qualification score of 599 out of 600 points.
The American shooter led the match right to the last shot, when China’s Wang Weiyi overtook him with a great 10.8-point shot, finishing on the highest step of the podium with a total score of 703.4 (597+106.4) points, and pocketing the first Olympic Quota Place to be awarded today.
Wang Weiyi was not listed between the favourites, before match. The 37-year old athlete had participated in his first and last ISSF World Cup event in 2003 in Changwon, Korea, placing fifth. Since then, he did not compete in any other world-scale event, and he was not even ranked in the international world ranking.
USA’s Uptagrafft, who closed his match with a 10.2-point shot, finished in second just 0.2 points behind the Chinese winner, securing the Silver medal with a total score of 703.2 (599+104.2) points. The American shooter was awarded the second Olympic Quota Place, a pass to the 2012 London Games.
The Bronze medal went to Germany’s Henri Junghaenel, a young shooter who had finished in the spotlights at the 2010 ISSF World Cup Final in Munich by finishing on the third step of the podium. The 23-year old athlete qualified for the final with 596 points, and then scored 104.8 points throughout the ten-shot final to secured the Bronze with a total score of 700.8 points.
He was followed by the veteran shooter Harald Stenvaag, a 58-year old athlete from Norway, who climbed up all the way from the eighth place to the fourth, finishing with a total score of 700.0 (596+104.0) points. The “1990 Shooter of the Year” Stenvaag keeps on shooting, trying to secure a pass to London 2012. The two-time Olympic medallist (1992 Silver, 2000 Bronze) has participated in six Olympic editions since 1984. His successful career brought him to participate in 50 different ISSF World Cup stages in this event, and the counter keeps on spinning.
Stenvaag was followed by Slovakia’s Josef Gonci, fifth with 698.8 points, while New Zeland’s Ryan Taylor ended up in sixth with 697.2 points. Twenty-6-year old Yury Shcherbatsevich followed them in seventh place with 696.1 points, while it was Denmark’s Kenneth Nielsen to closed the final in eighth and last place with 696.0 points.