Small-Bore Rifle, Three Positions, 50 metres, Men

The men’s 50 m small-bore rifle three positions event was the last shooting medal to be decided at Tokyo. The 39 competitors were the lowest number in this event since 1980 when there were also 39 starters in Moskva. The reigning 2018 World Champion was Tomasz Bartnik and he competed in Tokyo, as did silver medallist Petar Gorša, while bronze medallist Michael McPhail did not compete. At the 2021 European Shooting Championships, held only about two months before the Games, Jon-Hermann Hegg (gold), Henrik Larsen (silver), and Yury Shcherbatsevich (bronze) won the medals and all competed in Tokyo. Of the medallists from Rio, only silver medal winner Sergey Kamensky returned for the Tokyo Games. The 2012 and 2016 gold medallist of this event, Niccolò Campriani, had already retired from competition back in March 2017. Another shooter not participating in Tokyo was the current world record holder in the qualification rounds (1,188 points) Jan Lochbihler, who did not qualify. The current world record holder for the final round was Yang Haoran with 465.3 points. He was present in Tokyo but did not compete in this event, taking part only in the two air rifle events, winning a gold and a bronze medal.

The qualification round was won by Kamensky followed by Zhang Changhong, who both had 1,183 points with Kamensky ranked first with more inner 10s. In the final Zhang led from the beginning and, after three kneeling and three prone series for a total of 30 shots, the top three – Zhang, Kamensky, and Shcherbatsevich – were separated by only 1.1 points. After the first standing series Kamensky took the lead while Shcherbatsevich slipped back to fifth place. In the next series Zhang came back to overtake Kamensky again while Shcherbatsevich was already eliminated before the single shots. The single shots did not change any of the medal positions with Zhang taking gold and winning the first individual shooting gold medal for a Chinese male at the Tokyo Games and, in doing so, setting a world record for the final round with 466.0. Kamensky won silver as he did five years earlier in Rio, and Milenko Sebić won the second shooting medal for Serbia with the bronze.