A hectic year of ISSF competition in 2023 saw shooters involved in two Grands Prix, 13 World Cups, the Junior World Championships in Changwon, the 53rd World Championships in Baku and the last hoorah of the World Cup Final in Doha. Athletes across all disciplines produced outstanding performances that augured well for 2024, where the Paris Olympics and Paralympics shimmer on the horizon.
China’s 19-year-old Zhang Qiongyue earned a first world gold in the women’s 50m rifle 3 positions event and secured her country an Olympic quota place in the process.
Zhang finished with 465.3 points, with silver going to her compatriot Han Jiayu, who had already secured the world 10m air rifle gold, on 463.5.
Sagen Maddalena of the United States took bronze with 451.9.
Zhang had led after the kneeling position but slipped down into third after the prone position, before recovering in the third standing phase to take gold.
“I am very, very happy to get the medal,” said Zhang. “We are doing well here because we all fight together as a team.”
At Baku in May, in the last World Cup before the World Championships, Britain’s Seonaid McIntosh had set a world record of 467.0 points.
That mark was broken at the Asian Games in Hangzhou which took place a month after the World Championships as India’s Sift Kaur Samra set a new mark of 469.6, with Zhang taking silver on 462.3.
But Zhang’s experience at the World Cup Final in Doha, the concluding event of the season, was less happy as, despite producing one perfect 10.9 score, she was the first of the eight finalists to make an exit.
Jeanette Hegg Duestad of Norway, already bronze medallist in the Qatar capital in the 10m air rifle event, added gold with a superbly consistent performance that saw her finish 4.2 points clear of team-mate Jenny Stene.
The 24-year-old world No.1 finished on 464.8 points having established a lead in the opening kneeling phase that she never looked like relinquishing.
Lisa Mueller took bronze ahead of her German team-mate Jolyn Beer, who had topped qualifying.
“It felt really good the whole entire final,” Duestad told ISSF TV. “It has been an incredible season and to finish it like this – it couldn’t be better.
“The season is quite long but I managed to find some energy.”
Reflecting on a lead that at one point stretched to 4.8 points, she commented: “But it’s not just a positive to be that far in front. Because it’s like you are thinking ‘I really have to mess up if this is not going the right way.’
But I managed to focus and in the end it was comfortable.”
Stene added: “It was a nerve-wracking final and I was feeling the pressure all along but it was good to be on the podium with a team-mate.
“If I am not winning it’s a good thing that Jeanette is!”
Duestad had headed the field on 156.0 after the first section phase, 0.5 ahead of Stene, with Beer third on 154.9.
By the end of the prone phase Duestad was a clear point ahead of Stene on 313.3, with Mueller third on 311.8 and Beer fourth on 311.3.
Switzerland’s Olympic champion Nina Christen finished in sixth place.
Duestad had a very successful run in the World Cup events, making the podium in four of the six involving rifle and pistol.
She finished second to Christen in Cairo, took bronze in Lima, where gold went to Siyu Xia of China, earned silver in Baku behind McIntosh and won gold at the final World Cup of the season in Rio de Janeiro soon after the World Championships.
In the two World Cups where Duestad didn’t figure in the top three, Kazakhstan’s Arina Altukhova won in Jakarta and Zhang earned victory at the Bophal edition in March, when Sift took bronze.
