Russian girls from the national bullet shooting team have never had to be left without medals at the Tokyo Olympics. Vitalina Batsarashkina won two golds and silver in pistol shooting, Anastasia Galashkina took second place in an air rifle, and her colleague in arms Yulia Karimova, together with Sergei Kamensky, became a bronze medalist in mixed competitions. To finish the Games with one hundred percent result, it remained to win a medal in the last event of the program - shooting from a small-bore rifle from three positions at 50 meters.
The Russians had a lot of chances for success in this discipline.
It is on her that Karimova specializes - in this most difficult and exhausting exercise she is the reigning champion of the planet and won this season at the World Cup.
At the same competition was the second and another Russian woman Yulia Zykova, who also has a silver medal at this year's European Championship.
But before fighting for medals, it was first necessary to go through a difficult qualification sieve, in which even the most noteworthy favorites often get stuck.
The Tokyo Olympics was the first in which girls had to take as many shots as men - 40 from their knees, lying down and standing to determine the final eight.
For Russian women, such a long format did not cause any difficulties. Both Julia lost six points in the first position - only Serb Andrea Arsovic performed better with 395 points. Zykova performed even better while lying down. She had only one hit in the nine, and with the rest of her shots she hit the center of the target. With three perfect streaks of 100 points each, she even walked ahead of the schedule for a world record, and not only for women, but also for men. American Sagen Maddalena also scored 399 points in the second event, and Karimova repeated her result while working on one knee, knocking out 394, which allowed her to continue to fight for the final.
Standing shooting can be called the most important - there is a knockout round in the final. Both Karimova and Zykova did not avoid mistakes, but they still looked great against the background of their rivals. They scored 389 points each. In this position, they were bypassed only by the German Jolin Ber (390) and the bronze medalist in pneumatic shooting Nina Kristen (392). As a result, Zykova became the best in qualification with a score of 1182 points - she was only three points short of the world record. Karimova is on the fourth line, gaining 1177 points. Maddalena and Ber are located between the Russians.
But it was impossible to rejoice at the success in qualifying - in the final they did not matter. Russian girls needed to re-prove their medal claims, starting again with kneeling and prone shooting. Zykova in these positions still felt great and compensated for her rare hits in the nines with excellent shots to the very center, once even gaining the maximum score for the final - 10.9 points. In the last series of prone shooting, Zykova scored a fantastic 53.1 points in five shots and became the leader with a total of 311.6.
Karimova started a little worse. Although she never dropped below 51 points in a streak, she scored a total of 309.6 points before standing. Between her and Zykova was the Norwegian Jeannette Hegg Dustad, who was fourth in pneumatic shooting. Not far from Karimova were Kristen and Maddalen, who still had a chance to break into the top three with one shot.
The stand for the Russian girls started quite alarmingly. The first shot of Karimova brought 8.6 points, Zykova - 9.7, but they could no longer go below ten. Fortunately, they made no more mistakes like that. According to the results of two series, after which the knockout round began, Zykova was still the first with a margin of 1.8 points from Kristen. It could be said that the Russian woman secured herself the right to one mistake in the last five shots. Karimova, on the other hand, was only 0.4 points behind the Swiss and was third.
Zykova had to use this right to make a mistake right away. She hit the top nine, while Kristen dropped out 10.8 - immediately there was no trace of the leadership. Karimova, on the other hand, waged a stubborn struggle for bronze with Dustad and after the second shot she emerged victorious. The Norwegian knocked out only 8.6 points and was forced to settle for fourth place again. Karimova won her second bronze in Tokyo and, together with Zykova, secured Russia the first medals in the women's small-bore rifle since 2004.
Zykova has not yet lost her chance for gold, but she did not succeed at all in the final round. With each of her attempts, she scored fewer points than Kristen. By the last shot, the advantage of the Swiss athlete had grown to 1.3 points, and she could miss the victory only at the cost of a breakdown, which the shooters have already made more than once at a crucial moment at this Olympics. But Kristen cold-bloodedly - for the fifth time in a row - hit the top ten and brought Switzerland the first gold in shooting since 1948. Zykova became the silver medalist - the Russians have not had two medals in this exercise since 2000.