China's Du Li claimed the first gold medal of the Athens Olympic Games with victory in the women's 10-meter Air Rifle competition.
Du entered the 10-shot final with 398 points in joint second place along with Yinghui Zhao of China and Katerina Kurkova of the Czech Republic. She was edged into fifth place after opening the final with a 9.4 score, but maintained her composure and rejoined the title race with subsequent scores of 10.6 and 10.8. She didn't overtake all-time leader Lioubov Galkina until the last shot, when she fired a 10.6 against the Russian's 9.7 points.
Du later said she paid no attention to what her opponents were doing during the shoot-out and was calm on her crucial final shot.
"I didn't watch the scoreboard at all during the competition," she said. "When I fired the last shot I was very calm and confident in myself."
The 22-year-old student scored 104 points in the tense final round to finish with a total of 502 points, an Olympic record.
It was an amazing come from behind victory as the Russian had led all the way up to the final shot of the competition.
For Du, It was her biggest career success, two years after a world championship silver.
Du, whose father is a police officer, took up shooting in 1994 when coach Zhang Yumei spotted her talent and persuaded her to train at an amateurish sports school in east China's Shandong province.
Soon after being selected into the national team in February 2002, she made a mark at the Busan Asian Games in October by winning three gold medals. She then equaled the world record for the qualification round and broke the final world record at a World Cup race in Zagreb in 2003.
For showing superb poise in the face of extreme pressure, Du Li is, without any doubt, our Olympian of the Day.
Photograph: Getty Images
