(LEAD) (Asiad) Ban Hyo-jin wins bronze in women's 10m air rifle

NAGOYA, Sept. 20 (Yonhap) -- Reigning Olympic champion Ban Hyo-jin claimed bronze in the women's 10-meter air rifle shooting event at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games on Sunday.

Ban, the 2024 Olympic gold medalist in this event, celebrated her 19th birthday with her first Asian Games medal, after finishing with 230.4 points in the final at Aichi Prefectural General Shooting Gallery in Toyota, some 25 kilometers east of Nagoya.

Hinata Taichi of Japan won gold with the Asian Games record score of 253 points, and Elavenil Valarivan of India took silver with 252.4 points.

In the eight-shooter final, two series of five shots were fired at first, with shooters given 250 seconds per series and the perfect score being 10.9.

Those 10 shots were followed by 14 single shots, fired on command within 50 seconds per shot. Eliminations of the lowest-scoring finalists began after the 12th shot and continued after every two shots until the gold and the silver medals were decided.

Ban was in third place after the opening two series at 104.9 points, with Valarivan leading the way at 106 points and Misaki Nobata of Japan in second place at 105.3 points.

Ban never caught Valarivan, while Taichi jumped ahead of Ban after five shots in the second series en route to the top of the podium.

When only three shooters remained following eliminations, Ban was at 210 points, 0.8 point back of Taichi and 1.1 points behind Valarivan with four shots to go.

Ban narrowed the gap with Taichi, scoring 10.8 points to Taichi's 10.6 on their next shots. However, the Japanese shooter hit 10.8 points with her next shot to eliminate Ban, who only managed 9.6 points.

The one other South Korean in the final, Kwon Yu-na, finished eighth with 124 points. She was the first to be eliminated in the final.

Earlier in the day, China grabbed the team gold medal with a world record 1,904.2 points while South Korea settled for fourth. The combined scores of three shooters per each team in their individual qualification round determined the team standings, and South Korea, with Ban, Kwon and Cho Eun-byeol, had 1,895.8 points.

"This was not an easy competition for me. I felt even more nervous today than I did at the Olympics," Ban said afterward. "I was worried even before taking my spot in the final. My body was not holding up and I didn't feel comfortable out there. We don't have as much time in the final as we do in the qualification round, and there are always risks of something happening out of nowhere."

Ban had been battling hip and lower back issues for months. She previously said her left leg starts cramping and goes numb after about a dozen shots -- which makes her bronze medal here that much more impressive.

"Fortunately, I was able to hang on better than I thought I could," Ban said. "But I am sorry that I failed to deliver the gold medal."

Ban said she was relieved in a way that she settled for bronze Sunday because it gave her something to shoot for going forward.

"If I had won a gold medal here, maybe I would have thought about quitting right then and there," said Ban, who followed her Olympic gold with a world title in 2025. "Now that I won bronze here, I gave myself a new challenge for the future."