16-year-old Ban Hyojin wins gold in 10m air rifle... Korea's 100th Summer Olympic gold [Paris Olympics]

Dramatic Victory After Intense Shoot-Off with Hwang Witing
Youngest Korean Shooting Gold Medalist in History
Set New Record in Finals Following Previous Day's Olympic Qualifier

Ban Hyo-jin (16, Daegu Physical Education High School), the youngest player ever on the Korean shooting team, won the gold medal in the women's 10m air rifle final on the 29th (local time), becoming the winner of South Korea's 100th gold medal in the history of the Summer Olympics.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

At the 2024 Paris Olympics, South Korea, which had achieved 99 gold medals in the history of the Summer Olympics with the women's archery team gold medal the previous day, built the milestone of the 100th gold medal with Ban Hyo-jin's victory. Ban Hyo-jin's gold medal is also the fourth medal for the Korean shooting team at this competition. On the first day of the competition, the 27th, Park Ha-jun (KT) and Geum Ji-hyun (Gyeonggi Provincial Office) won silver in the mixed 10m air rifle event, and on the 28th, in the women's 10m air pistol final, Oh Ye-jin (IBK Industrial Bank) and Kim Ye-ji (Imsil County Office) swept the gold and silver medals respectively.

Ban Hyo-jin also set the record as the youngest Olympic medalist in the history of Korean shooting. At the age of 16 years, 10 months, and 18 days, Ban surpassed the previous record held by Kang Cho-hyun, the silver medalist in this event at the 2000 Sydney Olympics (who was 17 years, 11 months, and 4 days old at the time). Ban started shooting only in 2021, the year the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were held, so she has only three years of experience. With her innate talent and diligence, she ranked first in the Paris Olympic representative selection and earned the honor of being the youngest Korean shooting athlete ever to participate in the Olympics.

Ban Hyo-jin is also the youngest among the South Korean athletes at the Paris Olympics. In the air rifle qualification held the previous day, Ban scored a total of 634.5 points over 60 shots, passing the qualification in first place overall. Ban broke the previous Olympic record of 632.9 points set by Janette Hegg Duestad (Norway) at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, setting a new Olympic qualification record. The air rifle final consists of eight athletes who first shoot 10 shots each, then shoot two shots at a time, with the lowest total score athlete eliminated one by one.

From the early stages of the competition, Ban Hyo-jin engaged in a fierce battle for the lead with Huang Weiting (China), the mixed air rifle gold medalist. With the gold medal in sight, Ban's aim faltered in the decisive series, scoring 9.9 on the 23rd shot and 9.6 on the 24th shot, resulting in a tie. Ultimately, the match went to a shoot-off, where Ban calmly scored 10.4 points, surpassing Huang Weiting's 10.3 points to secure the gold medal. Ban set a new Olympic final record in this event with a total score of 251.8 points.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.