The men’s 50m rifle prone event will be one of the five rifle events which will take place at the Rio Olympic Games. It will be conducted on 12 August 2016 at the National Shooting Centre in Deodoro. The event will be held before the women’s and men’s skeet events take place on the same day. This event is only conducted for the men – no such event is conducted in the women’s category.
India will be represented by two medal hopefuls in Gagan Narang and Chain Singh as both the shooters managed to qualify in this category. There have been doubts over the health of Chain Singh as he has been diagnosed with pulmonary embolism and pneumonia.
His preparations for the Games will be severely affected as he will not be able to travel to the host nation until 1 August 2016. However, his recent record has seen him win six medals at the 2016 South Asian Games held in Guwahati. He had also won a gold medal at the 2014 Asian Championships in Kuwait City and a bronze medal at the 2014 Asian Games held in Incheon.
Whereas it will be Narang’s third Olympic Games, and the 33-year-old will be focussing on bettering his record of winning a bronze medal in the 10m air rifle event at the London Olympics. The shooter has his eyes set on three medals, but managing all three events could be a tough job for him. However, the positive sign for the Indian fans is that Narang has fared well in this event in the last two years. He won the bronze medal at the 2015 ISSF World Cup held in Fort Benning.
We look at what the men’s 50-metre rifle prone event provides to the spectators:
What is the 50 metres rifle prone event?
The men’s 50 metres rifle prone event is an International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) shooting event which is a part of the Olympic shooting competitions. In this event, athletes from different nations who have qualified for the event, shoot at a distance of 50 metres in the prone position. The shooters are allowed to use only a 5.6 millimeters or 0.22 inches caliber rifle with a maximum weight of 8.0 kilograms.
The shooters have to lie flat on their belly in the prone position before taking the shot through their rifles.
The shooting range is arranged so that the center of the target is positioned at 0.75 metres above the floor and the total diameter of the target should measure 154.4 millimeters. The diameter of the fourth ring should be 106.4 millimeters, while that of the tenth ring should be 10.4 millimeters. Also, shooters are allowed to use specialized clothing to improve their stability while taking a shooting position.
Rules
In the qualification round of the 50m rifle prone event, every shooter is supposed to fire 60 shots within 50 minutes of taking the first shot. The points in qualification are accumulated in decimal points, where the maximum score per shot can only be 10.9 points. The score is above 10 because of an additional set of 10 rings which increases the score by 0.1 points as the shot approaches the center of the target. The maximum qualification score for any shooter is 654.0 points.
Final
The final round of the event consists of the top-eight athletes from the qualification round. These shooters are then allowed to shoot up to 20 final shots.
Just like the qualification round, the maximum score for each shot is 10.9 points. Therefore, a maximum score for any shooter can reach 218.0 points in the final round. Like any other shooting event, all the eight finalists start the match with 0 points as no qualification score is carried forward into the final round.
The shooters are to begin with two series of 3 shots, which are to be fired within 100 seconds. These 6 shots are then to be followed by the remaining 14 single shots which are fired on command and within 30 seconds. In this process, the athlete with the lowest aggregate score is eliminated from the final and is placed 8th after the eighth shot. All the following eliminations are determined every 2 shots until there are gold and silver medal winners by the 20th and last shot.
If there is a tie where the lowest ranking athlete is to be eliminated, the tied athletes will fire additonal single shots until the tie is broken.
Indians at the event:
Men: Gagan Narang, Chain Singh
London 2012 result:
Men
Gold: Sergei Martynov (Bulgaria)
Silver: Lionel Cox (Belgium)
Bronze: Rajmond Debevec (Slovakia)
