Korean women settle for 25-meter pistol team silver after star shooter's miscue
An unfired shot by Olympic champion Yang Ji-in was counted as a miss, knocking her out of individual medal contention and dropping Korea to second place at the Asian Games.
Korea's Yang Ji-in wipes away tears after the women's 25-meter pistol qualification round, which doubled as the team event, at the Asian Games Aichi-Nagoya 2026 at the Aichi Prefectural General Shooting Gallery in Toyota City, Japan, on Monday. Yang scored a zero on her 21st shot due to a delayed shot, which affected both her individual score and the team's overall score.
YONHAP
Korea settled for silver in a pistol shooting team event at the Asian Games Aichi-Nagoya 2026 on Monday following its star athlete's costly miscue.
The trio of Yang Ji-in, Oh Ye-jin and Bong Seo-rin was in contention for the 25-meter team title at the start of the day at Aichi Prefectural General Shooting Gallery in Toyota. Yang, the 2024 Olympic individual champion in this distance, was also going for an individual medal here.
For the event, scores for three shooters on each team in the individual qualification round are added to determine the team standings.
The individual qualification round consisted of two stages — precision and rapid fire, with 30 shots divided into six five-shot series for each section.
In the precision stage, there was a time limit of five minutes per series. For the rapid fire stage, a three-second limit applied to each shot.
During her rapid fire stage, Yang failed to pull the trigger on her 21st shot within the three-second window. The unfired shot was recorded as a miss for zero points.
With one more group of 12 shooters remaining, Yang, who was in first place after Sunday's initial qualification round, fell all the way to 16th with 575 points. In the team standings, Korea dropped from first to fourth, with Bong left as its final shooter in the individual qualification.
Bong came to the team's rescue, finishing with 581 points to lift Korea to second place in the team standings, while finishing seventh in the individual qualification to advance to the eight-shooter final set for Monday afternoon.
Oh had 579 points to rank 10th and Yang ended up in 17th place.
With a combined 1,735 points, Korea took silver behind China, which had 1,743 points — a gap small enough that a properly fired shot by Yang could have made Korea the team champion. Yang led all shooters with 27 inner-10s.
Yang was inconsolable afterward, barely managing to say, “I am really sorry to my teammates who have worked so hard together to get ready for this competition.”
Yonhap
