The first gold on offer at the Olympics will once again be the women’s 10m air rifle. The Chinese contingent, expected through various projections to win the maximum number of gold medals this Summer Games, will be watching that event keenly. Local girl Du Li defends her title from Athens 2004.

For India too it’s an important event. Anjali Bhagwat will take aim to reverse the dashed hopes of her first two Olympics. (In Sydney 2000, she placed 8th in the event.) India has brought nine shooters to Beijing, including two women. And along with Bhagwat, Avneet Kaur Sidhu will also compete in two categories: 10m air rifle and 50m rifle 3 positions.

Shooting at the Olympics has extreme peculiarities. It is, amazingly, a sport to which separation of the men’s and women’s competition began in 1984, a movement completed as recently as 1996, according to The Complete Book of the Olympics by David Wallechinsky, a handbook updated every four years and which every second reporter appears to be carrying in this vast Media Press Centre.

Shooting also has a complicated way of keeping its records. According, once again, to the well-informed Mr Wallechinsky, “Every few years, someone conquers a target and achieves a perfect score. At this point, the officials of the International Shooting Union alter the target by decreasing the size of the bull’s eye and the rings. It is for this reason that the world records for various events sometimes go down instead of up.”

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