South Korea earned 3 bronze medals in women's rifle and pistol shooting at the Asian Games in China on Wednesday.
A trio of Lee Eun-seo, Bae Sang-hee and Lee Kye-rim combined for 1,756 points for the bronze medal in the women's 50-meter rifle 3 positions team event at Fuyang Yinhu Sports Centre in Hangzhou. China led the way with 1,773 points and India took silver with 1,764 points.
This was Lee Eun-seo's second medal here, following her bronze medal in the 10m air rifle mixed team event Tuesday.
She also qualified for the individual final of the 50m event scheduled for later Wednesday as one of the top eight shooters. She finished fifth with 590 points in the qualification.
Bae squeezed into the final with 586 points, despite finishing in ninth place. Han Jiayu of China finished eighth with 588 points, but she would have been the third Chinese in the final, with each country only allowed to have two athletes competing for a medal. Bae was moved up to take Han's place.
Lee Kye-rim scored 580 points to rank 19th.
In the individual final, Lee finished in fourth place with 440.8 points, while Bae ended in eighth place with 400.7 points.
The eight finalists took shots in kneeling, prone and standing positions, with the maximum score of 10.9 points per shot.
The final began with 15 shots in kneeling, 15 shots in prone and 10 more in standing.
At the end of the standing series, or 40 shots, the two lowest-ranked shooters were eliminated to take eighth and seventh places.
From there, five final shots were fired. After each shot, the lowest-ranked athlete was knocked out until the bronze medal winner was decided by the 44th shot. The gold and silver medalists were determined by the 45th shot.
Lee ranked fourth after the 15 shots from the kneeling position with 153.6 points, a full point behind the leader, Sift Kaur Samra of India. Bae sat in last place with 144.2 points.
Lee remained fourth place after 15 shots in prone at 308.9 points, 0.8 point behind the bronze medal position held by Zhang Qiongyue of China.
After the 10 shots from the standing position, Lee still ranked in fourth, but now 1.6 points behind Ashi Chouskey of India for third.
She was eliminated with her 43rd shot, unable to make up ground on Chouskey.
Samra won the gold with a world record score of 469.6 points, 7.3 ahead of Zhang.
There was no separate final for the team portion of the 50m event. The qualification scorers of individual shooters were added to determine the team rankings.
Also on Wednesday at Fuyang, South Korea claimed bronze in the women's 25m pistol team event.
Yang Ji-in, Sim Eun-ji and Kim Lan-a scored a combined 1,742 points for third place behind India (1,759 points) and China (1,756 points).
Yang later picked up bronze in the individual event. She was the only South Korean to qualify for the final, which was open to the top eight qualifiers, after scoring 586 points in the qualification. Sim had 579 and Kim had 577 to rank 14th and 18th, respectively.
In the individual final, the shooters first took four series of shots, each of them made up of five shots, and a score of 10.2 points or higher counted as a hit.
At the end of the fourth series, or 20th shot, the shooter with the lowest score was eliminated to take eighth place. At the end of each series that followed, the lowest-ranked athlete was knocked off.
Through the first four series, Yang was in second place with 15 hits, two behind Liu Rui of China.
She remained in second place through five series. But during the sixth series, one of Yang's shots failed to register on the target, causing an extensive delay as officials tried to determine the score of the shot.
It ended up being a "miss," meaning it wasn't higher than 10.2 points. And Yang had 22 points through six series, with Liu still leading at 24.
Apparently affected by the long pause, Yang missed her first four shots of the seventh series before finally getting a hit with her fifth shot. She dropped to a three-way tie for second place with 23 points.
The next series would determine the fourth-place shooter, and Yang was tied with Feng Sixuan of China after those five shots with 26 hits apiece.
In the ensuing shootoff, Yang recorded five hits to eliminate Feng and secure at least a bronze.
And that's the medal she ended up with, as Liu and Esha Singh of India took gold and silver with 38 and 34 points, respectively.
As in the rifle team event, there was no final for the team pistol competition. The qualification scores of each shooter were added to rank teams.
South Korea has so far collected two golds, three silvers and six bronzes for 11 medals in total in shooting, with four more days of competition to go.
At the 2018 Asian Games, South Korea had three golds, four silvers and five bronzes total.
Source: Yonhap News Agency