Chapter 569: 10m Air Rifle

Chapter 569: Ten-Meter Air Rifle

"Ah Nan Ge! %#...%...%..."

"Ni %...%...@@##%"

The two met, each barely understanding the other's dialect, a scene identical to when Meng Fan had met Xu Jiayu earlier.

"Ah Nan Ge, what are you doing here?"

"I'm here visiting with some leaders, and I heard you were shooting arrows nearby, so I came to watch. Hoo, your archery is deadly—people are stunned just watching you."

"What a coincidence—I was actually thinking of looking you up recently."

"Oh? What for?"

"My hands are itching. I want to touch a gun."

"Young man, don't say things carelessly, hahaha!" After the jest, he asked curiously, "You're not thinking of challenging the world record in shooting, are you?"

Seeing Meng Fan nod, Zhu Kainan couldn't help but believe him. After a moment's thought, he said, "Alright, I'll take the leaders on the rest of the tour first. We'll meet at the shooting range later."

Meng Fan was delighted. He went with Zhu Kainan to greet the leaders, then returned to pack up. Before heading to the shooting range, he had to treat the archery team members to lunch.

Shooting is a strong suit for China, a major source of gold medals in the Olympics and world events.

Zhejiang's shooting is also formidable, having won four Olympic gold medals. Excluding Meng Fan's gold, that accounts for nearly one-fifth of all Olympic golds won by Zhejiang.

Among them, China's first female Olympic champion was Zhejiang shooter Wu Xiaoxuan, from the same Games as Xu Haifeng.

Zhu Kainan is also an Olympic champion, and the first from Wenzhou, winning his gold by breaking the world record. He later won an Olympic silver and multiple world titles.

After retiring in 2016, he became a coach and now serves as the director of the Zhejiang Shooting, Archery, and Cycling Management Center.

After Meng Fan treated the archers to lunch, they all asked Yang Ji for permission to follow Meng Fan to the shooting range, eager to see how he handled shooting live.

When they arrived at the shooting range, Zhu Kainan was already there.

Cutting to the chase, they got down to business.

Zhu Kainan asked, "So you really want to challenge the world record in shooting? Which event are you going for?"

Shooting has many individual events—up to 52 at the World Championships and 21 at the Olympics, divided into rifle, pistol, and shotgun. Not counting women's, mixed, and team events, there are nine standard men's events alone.

Men's 10m air rifle.

Men's 50m rifle three positions.

Men's 50m rifle prone.

Men's 10m air pistol.

Men's 25m rapid fire pistol 60 shots.

Men's 50m free pistol 60 shots.

Men's skeet.

Men's trap.

Men's double trap.

All nine events have world records, falling within Meng Fan's challenge scope.

Zhu Kainan asked which event Meng Fan would choose. Of course, Meng Fan wanted all of them!

But...

Meng Fan admitted, "I've only ever tried the men's 10m air rifle. For the others, Ah Nan Ge, could you arrange some coaches to get me familiar?"

"Well..."

Meng Fan's achievement title [Marksman] boosts shooting precision, a stat that can be converted to both archery and shooting. Meng Fan had completed this achievement mainly through archery, so he was unfamiliar with shooting—meaning the precision hadn't fully transferred to shooting events.

Zhu Kainan's mind stalled for a moment. Rifles, air rifles, pistols, air pistols, and shotguns for skeet—all different gun types, with varying distances—and yet someone claimed to be familiar only with air rifles but dared to challenge world records in everything—

Oh, it's Meng Fan. Never mind.

Even if it seemed absurd, Zhu Kainan had great faith in his fellow townsman. This guy seemed to talk big, but every seemingly impossible boast he effortlessly made real.

Of course, even with that confidence, Zhu Kainan assumed Meng Fan would need some time to practice and familiarize himself before attempting world records. He never imagined Meng Fan would challenge them today!

To try a new shooting event today and challenge its world record the same day—what did he think world records were?

Meng Fan started with the 10m air rifle, the event he had tried. Many Olympic viewers have heard of it—it's often the first event of the Games (women's). So far, three Chinese female athletes have won the first gold of their respective Olympics in this event.

Zhu Kainan also won Olympic gold in this event, breaking the world record.

The 10m air rifle competition consists of a qualification round and a final. In the qualification round, men shoot 60 shots and women 40 shots within a time limit, with the top scorers advancing to the final for 10 more shots.

In the qualification round, single shots are scored without decimals; the final 10 shots are scored to one decimal place (maximum 10.9 rings). Scores in the 10m air rifle have improved rapidly in recent years, with the best world scores now reaching perfect rounds (600 for men, 400 for women).

Anyone familiar with the 10m air rifle knows how difficult it is. Simply put, despite being only ten meters, hitting the target is extremely hard. It's like a mosquito placed on a target ten meters away—hitting its edge gets you 7 rings, and hitting 10 rings or above means striking the mosquito's forehead.

Equipment ready, showtime begins.

After five sighting shots, Meng Fan started hitting ten rings every time.

With a time limit of 105 minutes, Meng Fan finished in less than fifteen.

It was thrilling to watch—far more exciting than a regular competition.

A hundred consecutive shots!

More thrilling than a hundred kills, right?

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

No mistakes.

60 shots, 600 rings.

Meng Fan smoothly entered the "final."

The rules for the 10m air rifle final vary by event. Some decide the winner after just ten shots; others use ten shots as a base score, then enter an elimination stage where every two shots eliminate one person, until the champion and runner-up are decided. Without ties, each of the top two shoots 24 shots.

Thus, the event has two world records. Meng Fan didn't know which the system would recognize, or if it would recognize both, so he first shot ten, then fourteen, trying both.

Once the final stage began and decimal points appeared, everyone once again felt Meng Fan's precision: 10.9 rings, 10.9 rings—he hit the maximum five times in a row!

Truly a robot!

Even a 16x scope couldn't match this accuracy!

Meng Fan continued. On the seventh shot, he finally made a mistake—quite a big one, scoring 10.7 rings.

Seeing this "low score," the venue erupted in cheers!

The live-stream chat instantly filled with flowers.

So happy!

They'd waited so long for a mistake!

(The chapter ends)