Second gold, third medal: Batsarashkina again became the champion in pistol shooting at the Tokyo Olympics

When mixed team shooting events were included in the Summer Olympics program, women had the opportunity to win three medals for the first time.

Before, theoretically, only men could become a three-time medalist in a rifle or a pistol, while girls from 1988 were available only two sets of awards.

After all the pneumatic shooting competitions were over, only one athlete retained the chance to climb the podium for the third time. It was Vitalin Batsarashkin's pistol shooter. She won individual competitions and won silver in team competitions. Unlike the Chinese woman Jiang Zhanxin, who earned gold and bronze in Tokyo, the Russian woman also showed up in shooting from a small-bore pistol from 25 meters. In this exercise, the 24-year-old Omsk resident is the current vice-champion of the world, so she was going to fight only for a medal.

Before starting to compete in the finals, Batsarashkina still had to go through a two-day qualification, in which the girls first compete in shooting at a fixed target, and then at the one that appears when they have only three seconds to shoot.

Five years ago, the Russian woman did not manage to get past this barrier, only four points were not enough to get into the top eight.

The qualification was not so ideal this time either.

Batsarashkina hit the top nine eight times in the first two series of ten shots.

But then she scored a grandmaster 100 in the third session - the most difficult part of the competition was passed.

The next day, in shooting at speed, which the girls are generally better at, Batsarashkina lost only six points.

As a result, the Russian woman took third place after the Bulgarian Antoaneta Kostadinova, whom she had already beaten in pneumatic shooting, and the Chinese Xiao Jiaruixuan. 2016 Olympic champion Anna Korakaki from Greece and reigning World Championship bronze medalist Doren Vennekamp from Germany also reached the final. The second Russian participant Margarita Chernousova was unlucky - she could not compensate for the failures in the same first two series and became the 19th.

In the final, the athletes had to once again demonstrate their skill in shooting at speed and earn one point for each hit in a series of five shots. According to the results of the first two rounds, a clear favorite of the final was outlined - Korean Kim Min Jong made only one mistake and took the lead with a margin of three points. Batsarashkina's sighting was a little worse, earning only half of the possible points.

But then the Russian woman was waiting for her element - shooting for elimination. In the first series, Batsarashkina knocked out all five targets. Kim Min Joon did the same, and her opponents weren't given such accurate shooting. The champion in pneumatics immediately climbed to a clean second place. Another round - and the native of Omsk was one point away from the leading Korean woman. Then Batsarashkina was either compared with her, or again found herself one point behind - there was no danger of early departure.

After the seventh and eighth rounds, Batsarashkina and Chon had to put the pistol aside.

The rivals had to firefight to decide who would fight for the medals.

As a result, only Jiaruixuan remained with the leaders.

But she could no longer claim something other than bronze - in the next round after this, she hit only one target.

The Russian woman also failed to shoot cleanly, and she lost one point to the Korean.

But the last series remained.

In it, the Russian woman was great and for the fourth time in the final she scored an ideal five points.

Jungkook flinched once, which leveled the score.

Now the girls needed an extra round to determine the champion.

The first shots for both came out accurate, and the second was a success only Batsarashkina. As well as the third and fourth. The final duel ended in a real defeat. Thus, the Russian athlete repeated the achievement of Marina Logvinenko, who won two gold medals in pistol shooting at one Olympics in 1992. But an even greater achievement was that Batsarashkina won three medals at the same Games - not a single athlete in history achieved this in shooting.