Tokyo Olympics 2020: China's Yang Qian shoots first gold of the Games in 10 metre air rifle

Tokyo: Chinese shooter Yang Qian won the first gold of the Tokyo Olympics on Saturday, a year after the event was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Yang won the women’s 10m air rifle with an Olympic record score of 251.8, ahead of Russian Anastasiia Galashina on 251.1 and Switzerland’s Nina Christen on 230.6.

Earlier in the day, India’s shooting campaign started on a disappointing note as Elavanil Valarivan and Apurvi Chandela failed to qualify for the finals of the women’s 10m air rifle event.

Making her Olympic debut, world number one Elavenil finished 16th in the qualifications after shooting 626.5 over six series of 10 shots each, while the more experienced Apurvi, who is also the finals world record holder in the event, settled for 36th place after aggregating 621.9 at the Asaka Range.

We have the first Olympic champion of #Tokyo2020!

China's Yang Qian takes gold 🥇 with a new Olympic Record of 251.8 points.#Shooting @ISSF_Shooting pic.twitter.com/t0UVwUfXRP

— The Olympic Games (@Olympics) July 24, 2021

The Indians were off to a decent start and even as Apurvi slipped after a disastrous second series, with two scores of 9.5 and 9.9, the 21-year-old Elavenil tried to remain in the reckoning with a fine performance in the third series, including shooting a perfect 10.9.

However, Elavenil, a World Cup Final gold-medallist, could not maintain the same form and a couple of 9s in the fifth and sixth series pushed her further down.

Apurvi, 28, who has won two World Cup gold medals during her excellent run in 2019, had finished 34th at the 2016 Rio Games.

Norway’s Jeanette Hegg Duestad topped the qualification with an Olympic qualification record score of 632.9 but missed the world record by 1.1, while South Korea’s Heemoon Park was second with 631.7. American challenger Mary Carolyn Tucker finished third with 631.4.

In a very competitive field consistently producing high scores, Elavenil fell two points short of the total shot by Russian Olympic Committee’s Anastasiia Galashina, who grabbed the eighth and last spot in the final by setting the cut-off at 628.6.

Ironically, the women’s 10m air rifle was the first event in which India clinched quotas for the Tokyo Games with Apurvi and Anjum Moudgil claiming them at the 2018 World Championship in Changwon, Korea.

Moudgil’s quota was given to Elavenil on the basis of the latter’s excellent run of form through the Olympic selection cycle.

The women’s 10m air rifle event saw one of the largest fields in Tokyo, with a total of 50 shooters in the fray.

A total of 60 shots are fired in the qualification round in an allotted time of 75 minutes from a 0.177 inches calibre air rifle, and scoring is in decimals of 10 with a 10.9 being the perfect shot.