You're reading: Cuban shooter Pupo wins Olympic gold

LONDON — Leuris Pupo earned Cuba its first ever Olympic gold medal at shooting, winning the 25-meter rapid fire pistol at the London Olympics on Friday.

Pupo
scored 34 shots in the final, beating silver medalist Vijay Kumar of
India by four shots. Ding Feng of China won bronze with 27 points.

“I
can’t believe it but it’s true,” Pupo said. “This is the height of
glory for the people in Cuba. This also means a lot for my family as my
wife (Yinnay Cruz) is pregnant.”

It was Pupo’s first major
championship of his career. His only previous victory came at a World
Cup event in Buenos Aires in 1998. At the past three Olympics, he
finished ninth, eighth and seventh respectively.

“This is massive
for the sport of shooting in Cuba, it’s wonderful,” he said. “It’s the
first gold, we’ve had three bronzes before. I did not think I was going
to win but I believed I could and I had to believe in myself to be able
to concentrate.”

Pupo said his mindset changed during the final as he slightly went ahead of the field.

“There
were a lot of things going on in my mind,” Pupo said. “First I was
thinking about bronze, then I started thinking I could win it.”

Pupo
reached the final in third position after Alexei Klimov of Russia set a
world record in qualification with 592 points, a total that beat his
own mark from 2006 by one point.

The world record gave Klimov no
advantage for the final as all competitors started from zero under the
new Olympic format, consisting of eight series in which each shooter
fires five shots within four seconds.

From the fourth series, the
lowest scoring competitor is eliminated from the competition. Scoring is
hit-or-miss, with any score above 9.6 counting as a hit.

Before
the final, Klimov acknowledged to being “a little nervous” but added he
was “feeling very positive … New rules mean I must start from
scratch.”

However, Klimov missed five shots in total in the third
and fourth round and could not catch up afterward. He was eliminated
after the sixth of the eight series.

Klimov became the second
shooter at the London Olympics to set a world record on Friday, after
Sergei Martynov of Belarus beat the 12-year-old world record in 50-meter
rifle prone by 0.7 points, winning gold with a final score of 705.5
points.

After finishing second in two World Cup events this year,
Christian Reitz of Germany was regarded as one of the favorites in 25M
rapid fire pistol. However, Reitz missed four times in his first two
series and was the first shooter to be eliminated in the final.

Fellow
German Ralf Schumann, the most decorated shooter in history with three
golds and two silvers, shot a 577 in qualification, six points short of
the limit.