“17-Year-Old Young Gun” Shoots a Signal for a Gold Medal at Athens Olympics

A new star has appeared for Korea shooting.

“Surprising Teenager” Cheon Min-ho (17-year-old, second year student at Kyoung-Buk Athletic High School) is riding a wave of momentum ahead of the Athens Olympics in August. It seems possible that, at this pace, he can capture a gold medal.

At the Men’s Air Rifle 10m competition of ISSF (International Shooting Sports Federation) Milano World Cup, held at Milan, Italy on June 17, Cheon passed the first round in first place with 598 points and earned 103.6 points in the final round to win the gold medal with a total of 701.6 points. Sergei Kovalenko (Russia) placed second with 698.6 points.

It is first time for a Korean shooter to achieve two consecutive wins in the World Cup, following his victory in the Athens World Cup (Pre Olympic) in April. At that time, Cheon earned 599 points in first round to break the world junior record and entered the spotlight.

The two events, in which famous shooters worldwide participated, are like pre-games for the Athens Olympics so Cheon’s name became known during the events. In particular, the world’s best, Jozef Gonci (Slovakia), who is ranked first in the world rankings and has won seven World Cups, only received a bronze medal as well as a silver medal in Athens, beaten by Cheon twice in a row.

Cheon is a promising player who can follow the history of high school Korean shooting stars such as Yeo Kap-soon and Kang Cho-hyun. Yeo took a gold medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic in her Seoul Athletic High School days, and Kang earned a silver medal in the 2000 Sydney Olympic while in the third year of YooSeong Women’s High School.

He is expected to get the first gold medal for Korea because the men’s air rifle competition takes place on August 16, at the beginning of Olympics.

Having started shooting as a sport by the persuasion of a friend of his mother, the coach of shooting sports in 2000 during his first year at Kyoung-buk Athletic Middle School, Cheon shot a perfect 600 points for the first time in domestic competition at the Phoenix Cup Korea Shooting Sports Championship (fourth tryout for Olympic) this April and attracted a lot of attention. He surpassed senior players with his great performance to place first in the tryouts and was the first high school student selected as a national player since Lee Eun-cheol for the 1984 LA Olympics. Although he is quite young, he has a brave mind, unshaken by critical moments, and an amazing concentration so he is considered as a natural shooter.

In the meantime, Cho Eun-young (Uljin County), who had perfect scores twice in tryouts, had a total of 501 points in the women’s air rifle to earn a bronze medal.

Jong-Seok Kim kjs0123@donga.com