On target for improbable gold, teen shooter wants to keep growing

CHATEAUROUX, France, July 29 (Yonhap) - While dabbling at different sports growing up, Ban Hyo-jin switched from taekwondo to shooting three years ago, at age 13.

It only took her a couple of weeks to realize she could be good at this new sport. And on Monday at the Paris Olympics, the rest of the world found out just how good Ban could really be.

Ban, 16, captured the gold medal in the women's 10-meter air rifle event at the Chateauroux Shooting Centre in Chateauroux, south of Paris.

She is the youngest of 143 South Korean athletes at this year's Olympics, naturally making her the youngest medalist as well.

Ban defeated the 17-year-old Chinese shooter Huang Yuting in the shoot-off, after they had equaled the Olympic record with 251.8 points after 24 shots.

Ban picked up shooting because one of her best friends in middle school wanted Ban to give it a shot, thinking the precocious teenager could thrive.

And before Ban formally joined her school team, the coach told her that she would have to work much harder than her teammates because Ban was more than a year behind them.

That drove Ban to put in the work, and just two months into her fledgling career, she won a municipal competition in her hometown of Daegu.

It was just the beginning. In March 2024, Ban won the South Korean Olympic trials. In June, she won silver in the 10m air rifle at a World Cup stop in Munich, Germany, sending a message to the shooting world that she could be a force in the Olympics the following month.

Ban then went out and set an Olympic record in Sunday's qualification round with 634.5 points.

And her biggest coup to date came in the form of the gold medal on Monday.

Ban held a 1.3-point lead over Huang with two shots remaining, but Huang, who had won the 10m air rifle mixed team title here on Saturday, caught up here with shots of 10.3 and 10.5.

And Huang fired first in the shoot-off and hit a 10.3, but then Ban responded with a 10.4 to clinch the improbable gold medal.

Ban admitted afterward she thought she had settled for silver after her 24th and final shot in regulation hit a 9.6. But once she found out she still had another chance in the shoot-off, Ban didn't want to fritter away that opportunity.

"I felt this was a chance sent from above, so I could win the gold medal," Ban said. "I was so nervous but I took a deep breath to calm myself down."

Ban said she knew what the previous Olympic record was and she wanted to break it and put her name into the record books. Two months away from her 17th birthday, Ban already seemed well aware of her place in shooting history.

Her gold was South Korea's 100th gold in its Summer Olympic history, a milestone whose significance was not lost on Ban.

"I don't even know if I deserve to win such a precious gold medal. But I want to keep pushing myself and set more records," she said. "This is a pretty good start to my career. I will not stop here. I want to keep getting better and better, and make people wonder what my limits are."