Friday will see the first encounter of American shooter Matthew Emmons and his Chinese rival Jia Zhanbo.
Four years ago, Matt won the Olympic gold medal of 50m rifle prone. But in the 50m rifle three positions event, he made a well-known mistake by shooting at another finalist's target and conceded the gold medal to Jia.
In the past four years, Emmons has pocketed five medals in rifle prone. He married Czech markswoman Katerina Kurkova, who, with her new family name, was just crowned in women's 10m air rifle with a new Olympic record and became the first gold winner at the Beijing Games.
Emmons disclosed that he and his wife had helped each other in the training, and the prone event would be a first big test of their training effect.
The lucky Jia was eighth-placer in rifle prone at the Athens Olympics. He won a gold medal in the event at the Asian Championships last year and secured a quota place for China. Coming from the populous Henan Province, the 33-year-old shooter is eager to prove his real ability on the Olympic arena.
If there was anyone who had equaled the 704.8 point world record of the event, held by Atlanta Games champion Christian Klees, that was Australian shooter Warren Potent.
Finishing just 42th in Athens, the 46-year-old veteran shooter has made amazing progress in his international competitions in the recent two years, snatching two bronzes and three golds from the World Cups since 2007.
At the Good Luck Beijing World Cup, Potent had a seesaw battle with American Thomas Tamas, outscoring the latter in the last shot and became the first person to equal the world record in international competitions in 12 years.
What is noticeable is that when Potent did this, his qualification score was 599, rather than Klees' 600. This means that his final round score was actually higher than the latter.
"I hope I could have similar performance in the Olympics," Potent said after the trial event.
World champion Tamas, 43, had the experience of equaling the world score of the qualification round, which was 600.
But the person who equaled the record most frequently in international competitions, according to the Beijing Olympics info system, is Sergei Martynov from Belarus, who did that for five times from 1997 to 2006. The 40-year-old, with four World Cup golds, one from the 2006 World Championships and two from the World Cup Finals in 2006 and 2007, was Olympic bronze medalist in both Sydney and Athens.
(Xinhua News Agency August 14, 2008)