(LEAD) (Asiad) S. Korea settles for pistol team silver following shooter's miscue

(ATTN: UPDATES with individual event's results at bottom; ADDS photo)
By Yoo Jee-ho

TOYOTA, Japan, Sept. 28 (Yonhap) -- South Korea settled for silver in a pistol shooting team event at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games 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 team title at the start of the day at Aichi Prefectural General Shooting Gallery in Toyota, about 60 kilometers east of the main host city of Nagoya. Yang, the 2024 Olympic individual champion in this distance, was going for an individual medal here, too.

Scores for three shooters on each team in the individual qualification round were 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 that three-second window, and the unfired shot was recorded as a miss for zero point.

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, South 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 South Korea to second place in the team standings, while finishing seventh in the individual qualification to advance to the eight-shooter final.

Oh had 579 points to rank 10th and Yang ended up in 17th place.

With a combined 1,735 points, South Korea took silver behind China, which had 1,743 points -- a gap small enough that a properly fired shot by Yang could have made South 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."

Later in the day, Bong finished last in the final with 11 hits.

In the final, the shooters first took three series of five shots each for a total of 15 shots, and a score of 10.2 points or higher counted as a hit.

At the end of the fourth series, or 20th shot, the shooter with the lowest score was eliminated to take eighth place. At the end of each series that followed, the lowest-ranked shooter was sent packing.

The last two remaining athletes competed for the gold with the 10th series of shots.

Bong managed three hits in her first series, but only got two hits in her next series to sit in a three-way tie for sixth place.

In her third series, Bong scored two hits, which dropped her to last place in the final.

Bong got four hits in the fourth series but that was not enough to bring her out of last place, as she became the first finalist to be eliminated.

Xiao Jiaruixuan of China held off Esha Singh of India for the gold medal. Kim Hyon-suk, the 19-year-old shooter from North Korea, won bronze after losing to Singh in three rounds of shoot-off.