ISSF World Cup Rifle / Pistol / Shotgun · Baku, AZE

Jon Jongoh secured his first world cup gold of the season at the last stage in Baku, today, leaving his opponents far behind him, while he’s looking forward to Rio

The three-time Olympic Champion Jin Jongoh of the Republic of Korea keeps on piling up world cup medals, on his road to Rio 2016, where he will try to write a new page of the shooting sport history by becoming the first athlete to win four individual Olympic titles in our sport.

The Korean shooter finished indeed atop of the podium at today’s 50m Pistol Men Final, at the ISSF World Cup in Baku (AZE), the last world-scale shooting event before the Games.

Jin - the current world record holder - scored 565 points in the qualifications, and then showed his great skills in the final, marking 192.4 points, finishing almost 5 points ahead of his opponents.

Today’s turned out to be his third world cup medal of the season out of four stages. Jin had indeed secured a silver at the pre-Olympic world cup in Rio de Janeiro, as well as a Bronze at the following world cup stage in Munich. This brings his personal world cup counter up to 23 medals.

Today, he dedicated the medal to his wife, saying that he’s ready for the Rio 2016, when only 42 days are left before the opening ceremony of the Games of the XXXI Olympiad.

The Korean champion did not leave many chances to his rivals. The 2015 ISSF World Cup title holder Zheng Bowen, 20, ranked 13th in the world, finished in second place, pocketing the silver medal with 187.9 points, 4.5 points behind the winner, after firing a spine-chilling 6.3 on his 18th shot.

Jin’s teammate, Daemyung Lee, finished far behind, collecting today’s Bronze with 167.1 points, adding the third world cup bronze of his career to his best achievements. He was followed by Turkey’s Yusuf Dikec, 43, who finished in fourth with 148.8 points, beating Serbia’s Dimitrije Grgic, 31, at the 4th elimination, when the Serbian finalist shot a disappointing 8.7 putting himself in fifth place with 128.7 points.

It was another shot in the 8th ring that pulled Germany’s Florian Schmidt, 30, in sixth place. The German finalist, fighting to survive the third elimination of the match, fired an 8.5 that forced him to leave with a score of 109.4 points. Behind him, the winner of the Rio 2016 Olympic test event Oleh Omelchuk of the Ukraine took the seventh place with 90.4 points, while Slovakia’s 37-year old Pavol Kopp - who had won a silver medal at the 2015 European Games held here in Baku - closed the match in eighth and last place with 70.7 points.