Denis Sokolov (RUS) won the 10m Air Rifle Men event, leaving Zhu Qinan (CHN) just one tenth behind him. Sokolov had never won a World Cup Gold before. Zhu, the world’s best Air Rifle shooter, has never won a Gold on his home range.
The 10m Air Rifle Men events kept the spectators’ breath at the 2010 ISSF World Cup in Rifle, Pistol and Shotgun events in Beijing, today. The home shooter, 2004 Olympic Champion Zhu Qinan, duelled right to the last shot against the 27-year old Russian sharpshooter Denis Sokolov, eventually finishing in second place by a narrow 0.1 difference.
Zhu Qinan, currently ranked first in the World Ranking in this event, walked into the match in first place, winning the applause of the home spectators with the highest qualification score of 598 points, and kept on shooting in the lead right to the last shot, when the young Russian shooter Sokolov stole the show, overtaking him by 0.1 points to finish on the highest step of the podium.
Zhu, who scored 103.2 points during the final round, looked incredulous at the scoreboard right after the tenth competition shot. His remarkable total score of 701.2 points turned out to be one tenth shy to beat Russia’s Sokolov, a 27-year old shooter ranked 54th in the World, who ended up in first place thanks to an extreme final score of 104.3 points putting him in the lead with a total of 701.3 points.
The shooting range of Beijing confirms to be Zhu’s “nightmare”, as the Chinese shooter called it after the 2009 World Cup held here. The two-time Olympic medallist, who has won nine World Cup Golds in the 10m Air Rifle Men event all around the world, has never been able to climb up on the podium of his home range, his bad luck starting at the 2008 Games, when he closed the Olympic final in second place by a few tenths.
Sokolov, on the other hand, smiled to the audience as he found out he was the winner. He had never won an ISSF World Cup Stage Gold medal before, even if he had finished in the spotlights before, winning an odd-defying title at the 2005 World Cup Final held in Munich.
The Bronze medal went to the 2008 World Cup Final winner and World Record holder Gagan Narang, 26, who closed in third place with a total score of 700.3 points after qualifying for the match with 597 points. He had been shooting also in the first final of the season, in Sydney, last March. There, he had finished in fourth place, just a few tenths far from the podium.
Narang was followed in fourth by the 2009 Shooter of the Year Peter Sidi, 31, coming from a Bronze medal won in the 50m Rifle Three Position Men event at the first World Cup of the year in Sydney. Wang Tao of China, 27, a first time finalist, climbed all the way up from the eighth qualification spot and closed the round in fifth place with a total score of 699.8 points, followed by the 2008 Olympic Bronze medallist Henri Hakkinen, sixth with 699.4 points.
USA’s Matthew Rawlings and Russia’s Artem Khadjibekov shot-off for the seventh and eighth place, finishing with 699.1+10.0 and 699.1+9.4 points, respectively.