Air Pistol, 10 metres, Men

The first day of the shooting schedule of the Games was unchanged and, traditionally, the 10 m air pistol event decided the first shooting medals for men at the Tokyo Games. The event was held for the ninth time at the Olympics and saw a field of 36 shooters, which was the smallest ever. The field included the reigning 2018 World Champion Jin Jong-O and runner-up Artyom Chernousov, who had lost that title in a shoot-off. The leader of the world ranking just before the Games was Javad Foroughi, followed by Saurabh Chaudhary, gold medallist at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics in this event, and Abhishek Verma. Not present was the world record holder for finals (246.5 points) Kim Song-Guk, as the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) did not send a team to Tokyo. His spot was re-allocated to the 2016 gold medallist Hoàng Xuân Vinh and, as the Rio silver medallist Felipe Wu earned a spot as the highest placed shooter in the world rankings, all three medallists from Rio 2016 were present at Tokyo.

The qualification round was still contested over six rounds with 10 shots per round, but the final saw a slight change since the last Olympics and was contested over a total of 24 shots for the two leading qualifiers. The final round started with 10 shots and, after every two shots, the shooter with the lowest score was eliminated. The winner of the qualification, Saurabh Chaudhary, was eliminated after 14 shots and placed seventh. The bronze medal went to Pang Wei and silver to Damir Mikec who both qualified for the final round only by shooting more inner 10s than Gulfam Joseph. All three had a score of 578, which left Joseph eliminated in ninth place. With this silver medal Mikec became the first male shooter to win a medal for Serbia. The gold medal went to Javad Foroughi, who had been in the lead since the second shot in the final and had a solid margin at the end. He won the first ever shooting medal for Iran at the Olympics, which made shooting only the fifth sport in which Iran had medalled after wrestling, weightlifting, taekwondo, and athletics. This was also the fifth time in a row that Asian shooters had won this event.

Finishing the qualification next to last in 35th position was Philip Elhage, who became the first ever Olympic shooting competitor to represent Aruba, although Elhage had already represented Netherlands Antilles in 2008.