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USA’s Daryl Szarenski left no chances to his opponents, walking into the final round with a four-point head start. He claimed the first ISSF Gold medal of his career, leaving Germany’s Ustaoglu in second and Ukraine’s Omelchuk in third.

USA’s Daryl Szarenski, 42, won the 50m Pistol Men even, claiming his first ISSF Word Cup Gold medal with a total score of 662.1 points.

The American shooter qualified for the final round in the lead with 564 points, walking into the final match in first place with a four-point advantage on his followers. Shooting consistently during the final round, he fired 98.1 points, finishing on the highest step of the podium with a total score of 662.1 points.

Szarenski had made it into two finals during the first ISSF World Cup Stage of the year, in Sydney. There, he had qualified for the 10m Air Pistol Men final, finishing then in fifth place, and had won a Bronze medal in the 50m Pistol Men event.

Following him today, Germany’s Abdullah Ustaoglu, 39, placed in second winning Silver with 656.4 points (560+96.4). Ustaoglu, competing on the international scene since ten years, had never finished on the podium, before.

The Bronze medal was taken by the 2008 Olympic Finalist Oleg Omelchuk, 26, form Ukraine. The young shooters, currently ranked 17th in the World, entered the final round with 559 points, six points less then the qualification’s leader Szarenski, and shot 94.2 points during the final to finish in third with a total score of 653.2 points.

Wu Liuxi won Gold after equalling the World Record during the qualifications. It was the last shot that decided the podium placements of the 10m Air Rifle Women event, which saw two home shooters climbing on the podium with a few tenths margin.

The 2008 and 2009 ISSF World Cup Final winner, China’s Wu Liuxi, 25, entered the match in the lead with an outstanding qualification score of 400 points, equalling the World Record for the third time in her career.

Beate Gauss of Germany, following her just one point behind with a qualification score of 399 points, challenged her since the first final shot, trying to move in the lead.The two rifle shooters duelled throughout the whole final, going back and forth in first and second place, right to the last shot, when Gauss fired a frustrating 9.2 that landed her in third place. The second Chinese finalist, Yi Siling, took advantage of Gauss’s mistake, moving up in second place, claiming Silver and stepping on the podium next to her teammate Wu.

Wu Liuxi claimed Gold with a total score of 502.7 points (400+102.7), winning her first medal on the Olympic Shooting range of Beijing.

Yi Siling, 20, finished in second place with a total score of 502.6 points. After squeezing into the final match through a qualification shoot-off with 397 points + 52.9, the young Chinese athlete shot an extreme score of 105.6 points during the final, securing the second ISSF Silver medal of her international career (she had finished on the podium also at the 2009 World Cup Stage held here in Beijing).

Bronze was taken by Germany’s Beate Gauss, 25, who after that unlucky shot closed the match on the third step of the podium with a total score of 501.9 points (399+102.9).

Two American shooters, Amy Sowash and Emily Caruso, finished in fourth and fifth place with 501.5 and 501.0 points, respectively. The second German shooter, Barbara Lechner, ended up in sixth place, with a total of 500.4 points, after shooting-off 10.6 to 10.0 the Russian Olympic medallist Lioubov Galkina, seventh today.

The Norwegian athlete claimed his second, consecutive, ISSF World Cup Skeet Gold medal. With a final score of 149 hits, he turned out to be unreachable for his opponents. Ukraine’s Milchev and Italy’s Lodde closed in second and third place with a total score of 146 targets.

It was a great day today for the 2008 Olympic Silver medallist Tore Brovold, who won his second consecutive ISSF World Cup Gold medal of the season with a total score of 149 targets at the 2010 ISSF World Cup in Rifle, Pistol and Shotgun events in Beijing.

Brovold built up his victory starting from the qualifications, entering into the final with an excellent qualification score of 124 targets, and with two targets of advantage on the other finalists. During the final match, the Norwegian shooter did not miss a single target, clearing the eight stations with 25 hits out of 25 targets, and claiming Gold with a total score of 149 hits.

Tore Brovold, 39, is currently ranked second in the world, and stands as the best Skeet shooter of the 2010 season. He started off by winning Gold at the first World Cup Stage of the year, in Acapulco (MEX), and repeated himself here in Beijing, at the second 2010 World Cup Stage. The next two World Cup Stages of Dorset (GBR) and Lonato (ITA) divide him from the 2010 ISSF World Championship in all events, where the first Olympic Quota Places for the 2012 Olympic Games will be distributed to the best performers. There Brovold will meet some of the best Skeet shooters of the World, including USA’s Vincent Hancock, the 2008 Olympic Champion, who did not participate here in Beijing.

While Brovold was running for today’s Gold, two shooters animated the fight for Silver behind him. The 2000 Olympic Champion Mikola Milchev of Ukraine and the first time finalist Luigi Lodde of Italy duelled for the second spot of the podium right to the last clay.

The two athletes qualified for the final tied with a score of 122 hits, and both hit 24 clays during the final round, ending up tied in second place with a total score of 146 targets. In the following shoot-off, Lodde missed a target of the very first double, leaving the second step of the podium to Milchev, who hit both claiming Silver. Lodde ended up with the Bronze, his first ISSF medal ever with 146+1 hits.

The Chinese hope Dun Yueheng, 26, a first time finalist, ended up in fourth place with a total score of 144 hits (120+24), while Germany’s Tino Wenzel closed the round in fifth with 143 targets after outdoing UAE’s Saif Bin Futtias 4 to 3 hits in shoot-off.

The German shooter moved up in first starting from the fourth qualification spot, winning on the lines of the 2008 Olympic range of Beijing. Australia’s Yauhleuskaya followed in second thanks to an outstanding final score of 205.7 points.

Germany’s Munkhbayar Dorjsuren won today’s 25m Pistol Women event at the ISSF World Cup in Rifle, Pistol and Shotgun events in Beijing, held on the lines of the 2008 Olympic venue.

The 40-year old German shooter, who had won here an Olympic Bronze two years ago, said to be extremely excited to be back on Beijing’s podium, and to win her first ISSF Gold medal of the season.

Dorjusuren had to fight hard to climb up on the highest step of the podium. The German athlete had qualified in fourth place, with 583 points and two points of disadvantage from the qualification leader, the home shooter Zhang Jingjing.

She started climbing up the scoreboard since the first final series, moving up shot after shot and eventually claiming Gold with a total score of 787.0 points (583+204.0). Dorjusuren had won her last ISSF Gold medal in 2009, at the World Cup Stage held in Milan.

Following her, the 2000 Olympic Bronze medallist Lalita Yauhleuskaya did even better, by scoring 205.7 points during the final. The Australian athlete climbed all the way up from the eighth place she had on the start grid, landing in second place to claim Silver with a total score of 786.7 points. The 46-year old shooters had started the season in the spotlights by making it into the final match at the first 2010 ISSF World Cup Stage in Sydney, where she had eventually placed fourth.

The home shooter, Zhang Jingjing, 21-year old, had never competed before in an international shooting event. After qualifying in the lead with 585 points, she paid her lack of experience during the medal match.

Shooting in the eighth and ninth rings more than once, she slid down in the placements, grabbing the Bronze medal with 786.3 points, just five tenths more than what scored by Bulgaria’s Grozdeva, who placed in fourth with 785.8 points.

One of the favourite shooter, China’s Guo Wenjun, the 10m Air Pistol Women Olympic Champion of Beijing, did not make it to the podium. The 25-year old shooter qualified for the final in third place with 583 points, ending up in sixth place with a total of 783.7 points after shooting 200.7 points in the final. She was followed by Azerbaijan’s Irada Ashumova (seventh with 783.5 points) and by Georgia’s Olympic multi-medallist Nino Salukvadze (eighth with 779.0 points).

Denis Sokolov (RUS) won the 10m Air Rifle Men event, leaving Zhu Qinan (CHN) just one tenth behind him. Sokolov had never won a World Cup Gold before. Zhu, the world’s best Air Rifle shooter, has never won a Gold on his home range.

The 10m Air Rifle Men events kept the spectators’ breath at the 2010 ISSF World Cup in Rifle, Pistol and Shotgun events in Beijing, today. The home shooter, 2004 Olympic Champion Zhu Qinan, duelled right to the last shot against the 27-year old Russian sharpshooter Denis Sokolov, eventually finishing in second place by a narrow 0.1 difference.

Zhu Qinan, currently ranked first in the World Ranking in this event, walked into the match in first place, winning the applause of the home spectators with the highest qualification score of 598 points, and kept on shooting in the lead right to the last shot, when the young Russian shooter Sokolov stole the show, overtaking him by 0.1 points to finish on the highest step of the podium.

Zhu, who scored 103.2 points during the final round, looked incredulous at the scoreboard right after the tenth competition shot. His remarkable total score of 701.2 points turned out to be one tenth shy to beat Russia’s Sokolov, a 27-year old shooter ranked 54^th in the World, who ended up in first place thanks to an extreme final score of 104.3 points putting him in the lead with a total of 701.3 points.

The shooting range of Beijing confirms to be Zhu’s “nightmare”, as the Chinese shooter called it after the 2009 World Cup held here. The two-time Olympic medallist, who has won nine World Cup Golds in the 10m Air Rifle Men event all around the world, has never been able to climb up on the podium of his home range, his bad luck starting at the 2008 Games, when he closed the Olympic final in second place by a few tenths.

Sokolov, on the other hand, smiled to the audience as he found out he was the winner. He had never won an ISSF World Cup Stage Gold medal before, even if he had finished in the spotlights before, winning an odd-defying title at the 2005 World Cup Final held in Munich.

The Bronze medal went to the 2008 World Cup Final winner and World Record holder Gagan Narang, 26, who closed in third place with a total score of 700.3 points after qualifying for the match with 597 points. He had been shooting also in the first final of the season, in Sydney, last March. There, he had finished in fourth place, just a few tenths far from the podium.

Narang was followed in fourth by the 2009 Shooter of the Year Peter Sidi, 31, coming from a Bronze medal won in the 50m Rifle Three Position Men event at the first World Cup of the year in Sydney. Wang Tao of China, 27, a first time finalist, climbed all the way up from the eighth qualification spot and closed the round in fifth place with a total score of 699.8 points, followed by the 2008 Olympic Bronze medallist Henri Hakkinen, sixth with 699.4 points.

USA’s Matthew Rawlings and Russia’s Artem Khadjibekov shot-off for the seventh and eighth place, finishing with 699.1+10.0 and 699.1+9.4 points, respectively.