Air Pistol, 10 metres, Women

The second day of the shooting events started with the women’s 10 m air pistol competition. The format of this event had also changed since the last Olympics. The qualification round was contested over 60 shots to equal the men’s competition, and the final round was held over 24 shots like all other pistol and rifle finals at these Games. There were 53 shooters in this event, which was the highest number of starters in the history of this event and also the highest number of starters in any individual shooting competition at Tokyo.

The field included the reigning 2018 World Champion Anna Korakaki, who was the world record holder for qualification rounds and bronze medallist from Rio 2016. Also competing was the 2018 World Championships runner-up, world record holder for final rounds Zorana Arunović. The gold medallist from Rio, however, Zhang Mengxue, was not present in Tokyo. The world ranking leaders from just before the Games were present with Yashaswini Singh Deswal (ranked first), Manu Bhaker (second), gold medallist at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics in this event, and Viktoryia Chaika (third). Chaika competed in her six Olympics, but this made her only the fourth most experienced shooter in this event as Mariya Grozdeva and Otryadyn Gündegmaa each participated in their seventh Games, and Nino Salukvadze was competing in her ninth Olympics. With this appearance, Salukvadze became the first woman to compete in nine Olympics and she also equalled the participation record for shooters held by Afanasijs Kuzmins.

Of all the above, only Korakaki qualified for the final. She finished second to Jiang Ranxin, who equaled Korakaki’s qualification world record with 587 points. In the final Korakaki was eliminated after 16 shots to finish sixth. Jiang was eliminated after 22 shots to win bronze. This left Antoaneta Kostadinova and Vitalina Batsarashkina to battle for gold. Kostadinova had been in the lead since the 12th shot and was still in the lead by 0.5 points going into the last shot, but with only a 9.0 from her final shot, her weakest shot of the final, she was overtaken by Batsarashkina who scored a 10.4 to win gold, to go one better than the silver won in Rio. Batsarashkina’s gold was also the first gold medal for the team Russian Olympic Committee and it ended a series of three consecutive wins by China in this event.

Anna Dulce of Moldova, who finished 48th, was born on 22 October 2005 and she became the youngest ever female shooting competitor at the Olympics, aged 15 years 276 days. With Asma Abu Rabee and Yasameen Al-Raimi, this event saw the first ever female Olympic shooters, representing Jordan and Yemen, respectively.