"VAN" (Sports Desk - 09.11.2025) :: Olympic champion Ban Hyo-jin ended the winning streak of China's Wang Zifei in the final of the women's 10m air rifle to win her the gold medal on her ISSF World Championship Rifle/Pistol debut in Cairo, Egypt.
Excellence on the day was all that could take Wang down, while Elavenil Valarivan of India took the bronze medal.
Qualifiers
Wang came in as the winner of three ISSF World Cup legs, including in Munich where she took the title as Ban - the winner of the Olympic title last year in Chateauroux, could only place seventh in her only appearance of the season. Opting to miss the Ningbo World Cup, Wang came into Cairo with three wins from three.
Notably, the 18-year-old was out to make history - a gold medal the way of the Chinese star would make her the first athlete to win back-to-back world titles at junior and senior level, in consecutive years. The two 18-year-olds were joined in the final by their experienced teammates - Wang had Han Jiayu, the defending champion and top qualifier, for company; while Ban was joined by Olympic finalist Kwon Eun-ji and World Championship debutant Kwon Yu-na.
Also showing moments of brilliance in 2025 were Elavenil Valarivan of India, the Asian champion; and two-time ISSF World Cup finalist Mariia Vasileva. The outsider's choice was Damla Kose of Turkey - who was in her first ISSF final after making her first European Championship final earlier this year.
The Final
Ban Hyo-jin had flirted with the thought of sitting on the benches instead of standing on the range during qualification - finishing eighth of the eight qualifiers, just 0.5 points ahead of France's Oceanne Muller. Such was the strength of the field that many top athletes would miss out.
Following Muller in positions 10th to 13th were Asian silver medallist and Ningbo World Cup winner Peng Xinlu who only made her international debut in September at 16; Norway's Jeanette Hegg Duestead, Germany's Anna Janssen and Great Britain's Seonaid McIntosh, who returned to action for the first time since the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
The end of the first competition stage had Ban with Wang Zifei in close proximity, with a strong start also coming from Kwon Yu-na, who would have hoped to upset some of the favourites. On the opposite side of the field, Damla Kose had two shots drop below 10, putting her clear at the bottom. As the elimination stage started, Kose left her best until the end, scoring 10.8 and 10.9 to go out in style in eighth place. Sometimes it is not the underdog's day.
Kwon Eun-ji and Han Jiayu had finished the first stage in sixth and seventh. For Han, it was a strong showing aside from a notable 9.5 which put her in peril. Heading into the elimination for seventh place, Kwon was in the danger zone, but just 0.1 behind Han and AIN athlete Mariia Vasileva. While solid scores for the Korean, her opponents outscored her, meaning she would remain in seventh.
Lead Switches Five Times with Four Leaders
At the front, Wang's first glimpse of struggling came with a 10.2, dropping her down to fourth behind her teammate Han, who had just been in an elimination battle. This allowed Ban and Elavenil Valarivan to stay together at the top. Ban would then take the outright lead following two 10.7s, but then pushed back into second when the Indian athlete scored a 10.9 and 10.6 to take the lead. The top three had at this point pulled a decent gap to the rest, separated by 0.6 between the three of them after Wang had recovered in the following two series.
Such was the unpredictability of the final that the lead changed five times in the first five elimination series. The first of these leaders was Kwon Yu-na, whose great start would be undone with a 10.2 and 10.1, dropping her to joint fourth with Wang. While Wang composed herself to put her back into the title fight, Kwon would be outscored by Vasileva, making them go to a shoot-off, which was won by the AIN athlete. It was by far Kwon's best result as a senior, who finished 14th at the Asian Championships and 27th in Ningbo on her ISSF World Cup debut respectively.
Han had found herself back in with a chance of a medal, but in the following series scored 10.3 and 9.7 to be eliminated in fifth, as Vasileva overhauled a deficit of 0.8 with some brilliant shooting of her own. A solid next series could not see her break the gap to the podium. Following World Cups in Buenos Aires and Ningbo, it became the third time this season that the 27-year-old had just missed the podium in fourth place.
Cool Composure Gets Ban the Victory
While small errors can be made further down the field, at the front it is less forgiving - and Elavenil Valarivan learned this the hard way.
In her first senior world final, there looked to be a great chance of her standing on the top of the podium and bettering her 2018 world junior silver. However, a 10.0 in the fifth series put the pressure on her as Ban and Wang overtook her. The three were separated by 0.5 with the Indian in the bronze medal position.
While the title is not confirmed until the final shot - the penultimate series is where the Korean put one hand on the gold. Valarivan unravelled with a 10.4 and 9.9, cementing her as the bronze medallist, while Wang repeated their second series that saw them drop away, with a 10.5 and 10.2. Ban scored 10.6 and 10.9 and now had a lead of one point over the Chinese.
They would match each other with a 10.7 and 10.6 in the final two shots, giving Ban the victory on 255.0 to Wang's 254.0.
Wang, Han and Peng Xinlu would take the team gold medal on a total of 1901.7, followed by the Korean finalists Kwon Eun-ji, Kwon Yu-na and Ban Hyo-jin on 1899.9 and India's Valarivan, Meghana Sajjanar and Shreva Agrawal on 1893.3 - beating Turkey on countback.
Post-Final Comments
Ban Hyo-jin said: "I became a champion for the second time since the Olympics, but I want to keep my pace and I do not want to come down from the throne. I already knew that the World Championship would be harder and more difficult than the Olympics, so based on that I've trained harder than usual, so I think I deserve what I got. I was seeing on the monitor that the points difference was always 0.1, 0.1, but I tried to not think about the other athlete's points, I just tried to think about doing better than them."
Elavenil Valarivan said: "All of us were doing our absolute best and it was one of the most intense finals I've ever been a part of. I think I really enjoy shooting the finals because I know that everyone is shooting well and I'm shooting well so it's just about staying on the nose and challenging myself to be the absolute best.
"I think it was a pretty good season for me. I've been working on a lot of things back home and I'm glad it's been working out for me. I've been consistent and I hope to improve in the coming days."
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