Rifle shooter Lee Yun-ri grabs silver for S. Korea’s 1st medal at Paris Paralympics

Rifle shooter Lee Yun-ri won silver in the women's 10-meter air rifle standing event Friday for South Korea's first medal of the Paris Paralympics. Lee finished in second place with 246.8 points at the Chateauroux Shooting Centre in Chateauroux, south of Paris. Avani Lekhara of India won the gold medal with 249.7 points, and Mona Agarwal of India won bronze with 228.7 points. Lee led Lekhara by 0.8 point with one shot remaining but hit a 6.8 to hand the gold medal to the Indian athlete. This event had SH1 classification, meaning that athletes could support the weight of the rifle with their arms and shoot in a standing position. In the final, two series of five shots were fired at first, with the perfect score being 10.9, and Lee took the lead with 104.2 points. Those 10 shots were followed by single shots. Eliminations of the lowest-scoring finalists started after the 12th shot and continued for every two shots until two shooters were left standing to battle for the gold. Through 22 shots, Lee and Le khara were tied at 229.3 points. Then with her penultimate shot, Lee hit a 10.7 to Lekhara's 9.9. Lekhara then scored a 10.5 with her final shot. Lee only needed to hit a 9.8 for the gold and her worst score in the final up to that point had been 10.0. But Lee only managed a 6.8 to settle for the silver. This is Lee's fifth Paralympics. She won gold in the women's 50m rifle 3 positions (SH1) event in 2008 in Beijing, and added bronze in the same event eight years later in Rio de Janeiro. Lee missed the podium in Tokyo three years ago. Source: Yonhap News Agency