"VAN" (Sports Desk - 12.06.2025) :: A shining start to the season continued for Sun Yujie, following her third-consecutive ISSF World Cup victory of the season in the women's 25m pistol final in Munich.
Norway's Jon-Hermann Hegg also stood above the rest with a fantastic standing section in the Men's 50m rifle 3 positions final to take the gold.
Women's 25m pistol final
China's Sun Yujie held off Korean Olympic champions Oh Ye-jin and Yang Ji-in to take the women's 25m pistol title.
Sun ensured she was the third Chinese athlete to continue an undefeated streak in one World Cup event in 2025 - following Hu Kai and Wang Zifei yesterday - and did so with maturity. Little separated the field after three series, with two shots the difference between first and seventh, as only Hungarian Sara Fabian lost touch with the pack.
But then the contenders emerged - and the top of the pile was Haniyeh Rostamiyan of Iran. The nature of this event meant many athletes swapped positions after every break and mistakes were punished. India's Manu Bhaker and Thu Vinh Trinh from Vietnam both suffered blips and as a result, exited in sixth and seventh.
But others were rewarded. Sun and Oh also took the lead, while Yang and Yao Qianxun of China. This led to a shoot-off between the latter, which was won by the Korean. Meanwhile, Rostamiyan would go from joint-first to joint-last in five shots, putting her in peril. Once again, Yang would win the shoot-off.
However, it would not be third time lucky for her in the next series, as she trailed by two to Sun and Oh and could not bridge the gap. The top two remained locked together going into the final five shots. While Oh scored two, Sun scored four and with it, her third gold of the season.
Men's 50m rifle 3 positions final
Hegg's battle with Ilia Marsov was a spectacle taken down to the last shot when the AIN athlete made a costly error to lose his lead.
Marsov and Hegg were first and second after the kneeling section and were then split by Jiri Privatsky of Czechia at the conclusion of the prone stage. The three were comfortably ahead of fourth-placed Patrik Jany of Slovakia and were looking good for the podium, barring any mishaps.
However, Privatsky started with a struggle and would lose touch with the top two, who went into the single shots with 0.3 points between them. Two shots later, they were level before Marsov pulled back ahead going into the final shot with a lead of 0.7.
A relatively comfortable cushion, it would take an error to change the direction of the gold medal; and unfortunately for Marsov, that is what would happen. A 10.3 would be enough for Hegg to claim gold as his opponent misfired for a score of 7.5.
Despite losing ground with the leaders and coming under pressure from those behind, Privatsky shot well in the single shots for the bronze medal, ahead of Jany and Hungary's Istvan Peni - who did not make the podium for the first time this World Cup season. Kazakhstan's Islam Satpayev, Chain Singh of India and France's Brian Baudouin were placed sixth to eighth.
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