Italy's Niccolò Campriani set a new Olympic Record in the 10m Air Rifle Men, qualifying for the Finals of the event with seven more shooters: Vladimir Maslennikov of the Russian Federation, Petar Gorsa of Croatia, Serhiy Kulish and Oleh Tsarkov of the Ukraine, Peter Sidi of Hungary, Abhinav Bindra of India and Ilia Charheika of Belarus.
The defending Olympic Champion, Alin George Moldoveanu of Romania, didn’t make it into the final.
In London, four years ago, Campriani won the Silver medal in this event and the Gold in the 50m Rifle 3 Positions Men one, while the only other Olympic medallist among the eight finalists is Abhinav Bindra, Olympic Champion in Beijing in 2008.
Russian athlete Vladimir Maslennikov is the highest ranked athlete among the eight finals participants, while Ilia Charheika is the lowest one in 24th place. Also, Maslennikov won the ISSF World Cup Gold medal in this event last April, in the very same range in Rio de Janeiro.
Charheika and Serhiy Kulish both won a Youth Olympic medal in Singapore in 2010, where the respectively pocketed the Air Rifle Silver and Bronze medal.
The 10m Air Rifle Men finals are scheduled to take place at 12:00 PM (UTC-3).