The final day of Olympic event competition at the Asian Rifle/Pistol Championship in Jakarta was memorable for Kazakhstan, whose shooters secured two quota places for the Paris 2024 Games.
It also saw India increase its tally of Olympic quota places to a record 17 thanks to the showing of Vijayveer Sidhu, who earned silver in the men’s 25m rapid fire pistol behind Kazakhstan’s Nikita Chiryukin.
Kazakhstan’s other Paris place was earned earlier through 19-year-old Alexandra Le, who secured a quota in what was her first international women’s 50m rifle 3 positions final after finishing seventh.
An Olympic quota place also went to the woman who finished one place above her, 27-year-old Kim Jehee of the Republic of Korea, a silver medallist at the 2019 World Cup in Rio de Janeiro.
On another day of stifling heat and humidity Chiryukin was able to draw upon his experience of winning gold at this venue in last year’s World Cup.
He had topped qualifying with 584 and carried on in similar style in the final, where shooters had to score 9.7 points or better to register a hit.
After his first four sequences of five shots the 21-year-old Asian Games bronze medallist had scored 19 hits out of 20 to create a lead he never looked like losing.
He went on to claim gold and Paris with 32 hits.
But he was measured in his self-assessment afterwards.
“I am pleased to have earned a place at the Paris Games,” he told ISSF TV. “But I need to train a lot because to be honest this result was not enough for the Olympics.
“I need to build a really strong season to win an Olympic medal.”
Reflecting on how his performance had dipped marginally after his superb opening sequences, he added: “I started to hit three out of five and I was thinking about it too much. I have to fix it. I will fix it in training.”
Sidhu, also 21 and a team bronze medallist at the Asian Games, shot consistently to take silver on 28, with the bronze medal going to the Korean who had finished second in qualifying, Song Jong-Ho.
“Technically I had a very good day, and everything went according to my plan,” Sidhu said.
“Our success here is a reflection upon the work of all our support staff and coaches – and of course the athletes have done a marvellous job.”
Song’s compatriots Lee Jaekyoon and Hong Sukjin finished fourth and sixth respectively, with fifth place going to Dai Yoshioka of Japan.
Sidhu thus contributed a second quota place for India in rapid fire pistol after the one won by Anish Bhanwala.
India has now swept all possible Olympic quotas in rifle and pistol, except for one in women’s air pistol.
In trap and skeet, India has so far managed to win two of the maximum possible eight Olympic quota places.
The Asian qualifier starts in Kuwait, where finals begin on Monday (January 15).
Le had begun in startling fashion in the Indonesian capital by finishing second in the women’s 50m rifle 3 positions qualifying competition.
With only three finalists eligible to contest the two available quota places she was one place adrift, in eighth and last place, over the first two rounds of shooting.
But totals of 50.3 and 50.8 boosted her third round total up to 402.0, securing her the spot she sought as Iran’s Najmeh Khedmati became the first shooter to be eliminated after scoring 50.4 and 48.6 for a total of 400.5.
The Asian title in the women’s 50m rifle 3 positions was secured with a total of 462.5 points by Kim’s Korean compatriot Lee Eunseo, who had already secured a Paris 2024 quota place.
Lee, who won bronze at the 2022 World Cup in Baku, led after the opening kneeling phase and extended that lead to 4.2 points after the prone phase, doing enough in the standing phase to earn gold by a margin of 1.9 points.
World record holder Sift Samra led the charge of three Indian shooters to finish on 460.6 – nine points less than the mark she set at last year’s Asian Games in Hangzhou.
Ashi Chouksey claimed bronze, with fourth place going to her compatriot Anjum Moudgil.
Miao Wanru of China, who had topped qualifying with 589 points, finished fifth.
“It was a very unexpected result,” Le told ISSF TV. “It was my first 50m final and I only realised I had a quota place when my coach told me afterwards.
Looking down at a phone already jammed with congratulatory WhatsApp messages from friends and family, she added: “I am just so happy, so excited…”
Kim told ISSF TV that competing in Jakarta last year had enabled her to anticipate and prepare for the conditions.
“I didn’t think of anything else other than a quota place,” she said. “It was just ‘I will do it!’”
Lee commented: “I knew it would be very competitive in the standing phase so I wanted to get as big a lead as I could in the opening two phases.”
She added that this gold had made up for the disappointment of finishing seventh in the women’s 10m air rifle.