Park Jin-ho wins another gold in men's rifle

Sport shooter Park Jin-ho won the men’s 50-meter rifle 3 positions SH1 final at the 2024 Paris Paralympics on Tuesday to claim his second gold medal at the tournament, becoming the first Korean athlete to secure two golds at the Games

Korean sport shooter Park Jin-ho competes in the men’s 50-meter rifle 3 positions SH1 final at the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games on Tuesday in Paris. [NEWS1]

Sport shooter Park Jin-ho won the men’s 50-meter rifle 3 positions SH1 final at the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games on Tuesday to claim his second gold medal at the tournament, becoming the first Korean athlete to secure two golds this year and bringing the country’s gold medal count to four.

Park shot his personal best at 454.6 points to surpass silver medalist Dong Chao of China with 451.8 and bronze medalist Marek Dobrowolski of Poland with 441.3.

Park also won the men’s 10-meter air rifle standing SH1 on Aug. 31.

His second gold extends Korea’s impressive medal run in shooting, with the country sitting at the top of the medal standings in the sport at six — three gold, one silver and two bronze — as of press time Wednesday.

Korea remains the only country to have secured more than one gold medal in shooting at this year’s Games.

More opportunities for medals in shooting await, with the schedule lasting through Thursday.

Park also has a chance to add one more medal in the mixed 50-meter rifle prone SH1 event that begins Thursday.

Paralympic events are broken down into different sport classes, represented by a letter and number combination, and these act as athlete classifications. The letters generally represent the sport and the number represents the level of impairment. The lower the number, the more severe the level of impairment.

The SH1 shooting category differs slightly in pistol shooting, where it indicates an upper or lower limb impairment, and rifle shooting, where it indicated a lower limb impairment. SH2 is additionally used in rifle shooting to indicate an upper limb impairment.

While Park added a medal to bring Korea’s medal count to 19 as of press time, the women’s goalball team ended their medal quest after losing the quarterfinals 6-3 to Turkey on Tuesday.

The Korean women's goalball team compete during the quarterfinals against Turkey at the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games on Tuesday in Paris. [NEWS1]

The women’s team still leave Paris having secured their first win in 28 years with a victory over host country France in the group stage last week. A medal at the Paralympics would have marked the second straight time the team has medalled at a major international competition, having taken the bronze at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Para Games.

Goalball is played by two teams of three players on the same size court as volleyball. Teams roll a ball containing bells at high speeds toward a court-wide goal, with defending players throwing themselves in front of the ball in an attempt to stop it. Each game is played over two 12-minute halves and spectators have to stay completely silent.

Team Korea sit in 14th place on the medal standings with 19 medals, with the Paralympics lasting through Sunday.

A mixed pairs BC3 boccia quarterfinal between Korea and Australia was due to take place later on Wednesday.

Boccia and shooting have been the only two sports at which Korea has won gold medals so far.

Korea is close to surpassing their medal count from the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, at 24. A total of 83 Korean athletes are competing across 17 sports at this year’s Games.

BY PAIK JI-HWAN, JIM BULLEY [paik.jihwan@joongang.co.kr]