ISSF World Cup Rifle / Pistol · Fort Benning, USA

After placing 4th in her two previous World Cup participation, 21-year-old Wu Mingyang climbed atop the World Cup podium in Fort Benning, taking gold ahead of two of her teammates, Zhu Yingjie and Zhao Ruozhu, who respectively won silver and bronze.

The ISSF World Cup Stage 3 in Fort Benning (USA) opened with the women’s 10m Air Rifle event, where the Chinese National Team swept the medal positions, taking gold Wu Mingyang.

The 21-year-old climbed atop the podium alongside her two teammates Zhu Yingjie and Zhao Ruozhu, as the trio owned the top three positions all along the match: after the first 5-shot series, indeed, Denmark’s Stine Nielsen was 0.7 points away from the 3rd place, a gap that reduced to 0.5 after five more shots.

There, the three Chinese shooters nailed an unbelievable series of 10s, distancing themselves from their rivals and igniting a three-way battle for the medals up for grabs: firing 23 of her 24 shots inside the 10th ring, Wu claimed the brightest medal with 252.2 points, while 18-year-old Zhu Yingjie — the 2017 Junior World Champion in this event, who previously signed a new Qualification World Record with 633.4 points — took silver with 251.8.

The bronze was awarded to 19-year-old Zhao Ruozhu — holder of this event’s World Record — who finished in 3rd position with 230.2 points.

Eventually, Nielsen followed Zhao and placed 4th with 206.9 points, while United States’ Virginia Thrasher — the 2016 Olympic Champion — took 5th place in front of her home crowd and scored 186.3 points.

The bottom position was finally taken by Serbia’s 31-year-old Andrea Arsovic — World Cup Final winner in both 2016 and 2017 — who placed 8th with 122.2 points and left the contest at the 12th-shot mark. Two shots later she was followed by Gabriela Vognarova (25) of the Czech Republic, who took 7th place with 143.3 points.

Both Arsovic and Vognarova were overtaken by 27-year-old Japanese shooter Shimizu Ayano, who then fired a couple of 9.9s in her 15th and 16th shot, concluding her match in 6th place and signing off with 163.5 points.

The ISSF World Cup Stage 3 in Fort Benning will continue tomorrow with two more finals: the 50m Rifle 3 Positions Men, scheduled at 12:45 pm (UTC-4:00), and the 25m Pistol Women, scheduled at 3:00 pm.

The match will be streamed live on the ISSF website, on the Federation’s Livestream channel and on its official Facebook page.

Live results, news and updates will be available on www.issf-sports.org and on all ISSF social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Weibo and Youku.