Pekler and Stankiewicz win 10m air rifle gold

Two gripping and volatile 10m air rifle finals at the ISSF World Cup Finals in Lusail produced victories in the men’s event for Hungary’s Zalan Pekler and, in the women’s version, Poland’s Aneta Stankiewicz.
“I am still shaking a little bit because this final was really nerve-wracking”, 23-year-old Pekler said after a competition where he only took over the lead with four shots remaining, finishing on 251.2 ahead of Serbia’s Lazar Kovacevic on 249.4.
Bronze went to 22-year-old European Games bronze medallist Jiri Privratsky of the Czech Republic after China’s world silver medallist and Tokyo 2020 bronze medallist Yang Haoran, who had seemed poised to win, failed to make the final three.
The competition had been led over the first two series of five shots by Naoya Okada, the Japanese shooter who had topped the earlier qualifying with 632.0 points ahead of Pekler and Yang. Okada maintained that lead in the first two elimination rounds, but then scores of 10.3 and 10.0 dropped him to fourth, one place above Pekler, as Yang moved ominously through for a 0.2 lead over Kovacevic, who had scored a 10.9, and Privratsky.
Two shots later the long-time leader was out, fifth overall, after scoring 9.8 and 10.5. Yang also faltered, however, scoring 9.9 and 10.5 with shots 17 and 18 to drop to joint fourth with Pekler as Kovacevic, who had scored a perfect 10.9 in the previous round, took the lead on 189.0 ahead of Privratsky on 188.7. Things got worse for the Chinese shooter in the next round as a 10.4 was followed by a 9.8 which meant he was out before the medal rounds, with Pekler taking the lead for the first time, 0.2 ahead of his Serbian rival.
The Hungarian extended his lead over Kovacevic to 1.4 in the penultimate round as Privratsky left with bronze and although he wavered with the first of his last two efforts, scoring 9.8, he recovered with a concluding 10.7 to reach a total of 251.2.
Kovacevic, whose opening 10.3 had narrowed the lead, was left with an impossible task by the time he fired his final effort, which earned 9.5 for a total of 249.4.
The women’s final matched the men’s for drama. It appeared for a while that the Chinese contingent of Jiayu Han, world champion, world No 1 and world record holder, 19-year-old world silver medallist and world No 2 Zhilin Wang and 17-year-old world No 3 Yuling Huang might replicate the clean sweep achieved by their teammates in the previous day’s women’s 10m pistol event.
Wang, Han and Huang had qualified first, second and fourth, with only France’s Oceanne Muller interrupting their dominance. The 20-year-old French shooter, who finished fifth at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and won bronze at this year’s European Games, underlined her potential to be one of the home banner-carriers at next year’s Paris Games as she held her lead in the first set of five shots and reached the elimination rounds just 0.1 off a lead held by Huang.
She eventually finished fifth – but not before the departure of the 24-year-old Chinese favourite, Han. Huang, whose elimination round shots included two 9.9s, eventually missed out on a medal by one place as Norway’s steadily improving European champion Jeanette Duestad brought her experience to bear in a competition where she secured bronze.
Meanwhile Stankiewicz, at 28 the eldest shooter in the final, had moved into the lead after the second elimination round before producing round after round of consistently high scores, including a 10.8 and four 10.7s.
She secured the greatest triumph of her career so far with 253.3 points, as Wang, despite two concluding 10.7s, remained well off gold on 252.6. “My first five shots weren’t the best so I had to run the girls,” Stankiewicz said. “My favourite shot was the 10.8, but there was a lot of 10.7s. It is all about the feeling inside you.”