China topped the Olympic shooting sport medal table at Paris 2024, which was the fifth time they have done so in the last seven Games.
Since its first overall success at the Sydney 2000 Olympics China has now drawn level with the Soviet Union, which last topped the table at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
The United States have finished top of the medals table on six occasions, the last being at their home Games in Los Angeles in 1984.
Italy have topped the table twice – at the 1932 Los Angeles Games and the Rio 2016 Games.
In all China won 10 medals, including five golds, in the competition which finished yesterday at the national shooting centre in Chateauroux.
Sheng Lihao, 19, earned golds in the opn.ening event of the 10m air rifle mixed team, where he partnered 17-year-old Huang Yuting, and in the 10m air rifle men, the event in which he became the youngest Olympic medallist when he won silver at the Tokyo 2020 Games aged 16.
The other Chinese golds came from Xie Yu in the 10m air pistol men, Liu Yukun in the 50m rifle 3 positions men, and Li Yuehong in the 25m rapid-fire pistol men.
The Republic of Korea won six medals, three of them gold through Oh Ye Jin in the 10m air pistol women, Ban Hyojin, who became the youngest to win an Olympic title in women’s competition as she earned victory in the 10m air rifle event, and 21-year-old Yang Jiin in the 25m pistol women.
A total of 19 different National Olympic Committees earned medals in the 10-day competition – a further underlining of the sport’s worldwide reach.
Vincent Hancock of the United States became the first shooting sport athlete to win gold four times in the same individual event -2008, 2012, 2020, 2024 - with victory in the men’s skeet.
Hancock then teamed up with Austen Smith to take silver in the skeet mixed team behind Diana Bacosi and Gabriele Rossetti on the final day of competition.
The competition threw up numerous stories. A spinal injury forced Adriana Ruano Oliva of Guatemala to give up gymnastics as a teenager but she discovered shooting after working as a volunteer at Rio 2016 and her gold in the women’s trap was Guatemala’s first Olympic gold medal in any sport.
Guatemala had won just one Olympic medal – Erick Barrondo’s silver in the 20km race walk at London 2012 – since making its Games debut at Helsinki 1952, but the nation won two on consecutive days in Chateauroux as a bronze for Jean Pierre Brol Cardenas in the men’s trap on July 30 was followed by Ruano Oliva’s gold.
It was a Games to remember for a nation whose athletes had to compete without the representation of their flag, uniform and anthem for two years before its National Olympic Committee was allowed back into the fold by the International Olympic Committee in March this year.
Amber Rutter of Britain took silver in the skeet women event barely three months after giving birth to a boy, Tommy, who was heard to be in good voice in the stands as she earned her first Olympic medal aged 26.
Rutter, who finished eighth at the Rio 2016 Games aged 18, had her bags packed ready to travel to compete at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics when she tested positive for COVID-19 and was unable to take part.
Such was her disappointment that she considered retiring – but now she has her reward for renewing her sporting commitment.
Rutter lost, controversially, in a shoot-off with Francisca Crovetto Chadid, claiming she had hit a clay that was deemed a miss.
Crovetto Chadid, in her fourth Games, thus claimed Chile’s first Olympic gold in any sport since the Athens 2004 Games.
Meanwhile Nino Salukvadze of Georgia, 55, became the first woman – and only the second athlete – to compete in 10 Olympic Games. She is also the only one to achieve this in consecutive Games, having made her first appearance for the Soviet Union at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, where she won gold in the 25m pistol and silver in the 10m air pistol.