Tokyo Olympics: Yang Qian captures first gold after winning women's 10-meter air rifle

China claimed the first gold of Tokyo Olympics 2020 courtesy Yang Qian who won the women's 10m air rifle event. The Chinese shooter captured first place with a personal record of 251.8 points in the final. ROC’s Anastasiia Galashina claimed silver, with Switzerland's Nina Christen winning bronze. 

Yang Qian wins First gold of Tokyo Olympics

In the straight shoot off Galashina started with 10.8 in the first shot of the final set, while Qian shot 10.7. The ROC shooter has a 0.2 lead overall going into the last shots. Yang held his nerve with a final shot of 9.8 to hold off her rival, who managed only an 8.9 her lowest score of this final. 

Yang and Galashina finished the qualification round in sixth and eighth respectively, while Jeanette Hegg Duestad of Norway who topped the table having shot an Olympic record in the qualifying of 632.9 finished outside of the medals in fourth place. After a close final, France's Oceanne Muller, Mary Carolynn Tucker of the USA, Republic of Korea's KWON Eunji and PARK Heemoon finished in positions five to eight.

Indian shooting contingent gets off to poor start at Tokyo Olympics

Indian shooters did not have a great start to the campaign as Elavenil Valarivan and Apurvi Chandela failed to qualify for the women's 10m air rifle final. Elavenil Valarivan and Apurvi Chandela finished 16th and 36th respectively in the qualifying event. Elavenil scored 626.5 points while Chandela finished the event with 621.9 points.The Indians were off to a decent start and even as Apurvi slipped after that, the 21-year-old Elavenil tried to remain in the contest with a fine performance in the third series, including shooting a perfect 10.9. However, Elavenil could not maintain the same form and a couple of 9s in the fifth and sixth series pushed her further down.

Coming to the Indian shooting contingent, the country has sent a record number of fifteen shooters to compete across ten events. This shooting team is considered to be one of the best consisting of some former world number one and current World number one shooters.

Image: JSW Sports/ Twitter