Rio Olympics 2016: All you need to know about the 10m air pistol event

Heena Sidhu
Heena Sidhu could be one of the best bets for a medal at Rio

The second event for the shooting stars at the 2016 Rio Olympics would be the 10 metre pistol for the men. This would take place after the 10 metre air rifle event for women and would close out the shooting events for the 6th of August at the National Shooting Centre in Deodoro.

Gurpreet Singh and Jitu Rai will be the Indian men competing in the event and Rai will be hoping to take his 2014 form into the event as he won gold in the Commonwealth Games, Asian Games and at the Maribor ISSF World Cup event.

Gurpreet Singh will be the dark horse for the Indian side but he does have a decent record from the 2010 Commonwealth Games. The women’s event will have Heena Sidhu competing on 7th August and this would be the second time she will be part of the Olympics.

Sidhu took part in her first Olympics in 2012 but will hope for a medal this time around. The 26-year-old is the record holder for the final round segment with a score of 203.8, which should give her extra confidence going into the event.

Also read: Know your Indian Olympian: 10 things to know about Heena Sidhu

There are however a few different rules between the events for the genders and for those who are looking to know more about this event, we have it all covered here.

What is the 10 metre air pistol event?

As the name suggests, the target is placed 10 metres away from the shooter and the centre of the target is located at a height of 1.4 metres above the ground. The target contains 10 rings and a further 10 rings are present the ten-point circle, so the maximum a shooter can score from one shot is 10.9.

The pistol used for this event should not weigh more than 1.5kg and the calibre of the pistol should be 4.5mm.

Rules

The rules during the qualification round differ for men and women. The men are given 75 minutes to shoot off 60 shots. The maximum score for each shot in the qualifying round is 10 points and the highest a person can score in this stage is 600 points.

Women get 40 shots in their 50 minutes and the same scoring rule applies as well with 10 being the highest score from one shot. The maximum a female shooter can score during this stage is 400 points.

Shooters can take a number of “sighting” shots before the first competitive shot which marks the start of the competition for them.

Final

The top eight scoring shooters make it to the final round where they battle it out for the gold. The scores from the qualification round are not carried forward and every contestant starts from 0.

Similar to the 10-metre air rifle event, the ISSF revamped the rules for the finals and the eight shooters start this round on equal footing with 0.

The contestants are to then take 2 sets of 3 shots each, which are to be fired within 150 seconds from one series and then there are 14 shots to be taken after the 2 sets of 3. These 14 shots must be fired within 50 seconds of each other.

The eliminations of the contestants start from after the eighth shot, so the lowest scorer after the 2 sets of 3 and then two more shots cannot take part anymore. Each lowest scoring shooter is eliminated after the next set of two shots. If two finalists have the same score after a shootout is held between the tied contestants until the tie is broken.

The scoring system is revamped during this stage with 10.9 being the highest score for a shooter with the highest possible score of 218 for the final round.

Indians at the event:

Men: Jitu Rai, Gurpreet Singh

Women: Heena Sidhu

London 2012 result:

Men

Gold: Jongoh Jin (South Korea)

Silver: Luca Tesconi (Italy)

Bronze: Andrija Zlatic (Serbia)

Women

Gold: Wenjun Guo (China)

Silver: Natalia Paderina (Russia)

Bronze: Nino Salukvadze (Georgia)

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Edited by Staff Editor