Cairo, Apr 30 (IANS): Chinese 18-year-old shooter Jiang Yiting won the women's skeet shooting gold at the 2023 International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) Shotgun World Cup held here.
Although Jiang reached the final with 19 hits out of 30 flying targets second to Italy's Simona Scocchetti who scored 20, she managed to reverse the situation in the final, scoring 35 hits out of 40, while Scocchetti settled for a silver with 33 hits.
"I am pretty excited now. It was a tough competition because in the semifinal I missed some targets. But eventually, I managed to adjust very well and got the gold medal," Jiang told Xinhua.
She said that she trained very hard every day for about eight hours to achieve this result.
"I was anxious about facing excellent shooters and world champions in this world cup but I had to overcome my anxiety and gather my confidence to get to the top," Jiang added.
"You have to have confidence and determination in your heart and to believe that the target is right there in front of your eyes and you can hit it," she explained.
Sun Haogang, a coach from the Chinese skeet team, said that he is very proud of Jiang for her well-deserved achievement, expressing his belief in her as "a very talented shooter."
"In the previous world championships, world cups and international games, Jiang Yiting demonstrated a very good performance, so we had it in our hearts that she could make it today," the Chinese coach told Xinhua.
Germany's Nadine Messerschmidt won the bronze medal with 23 hits out of 40, while Ukrainian Iryna Malovichko came in fourth place.
"The Chinese are excellent in all shooting sports, but today's result in the shotgun, in particular, was a result of hard work and massive effort, which led the Chinese athlete to win over her opponents from Italy, Germany and Ukraine," said Hazem Hosny, head of both the Egyptian and the African shooting federation.
"This is a success for China. Or I'd rather say it's a continuation of China's successes in different sports, including pistol, rifle and shotgun shooting," the Egyptian sports official told Xinhua.
Hosny added that Egypt's hosting of such world championships helps with exchanging expertise between Egyptian and foreign shooters.