Competitors 17 from 14 nations Date 21 August 2004 | Winning score 694.9 | |
Venue Markopoulo Olympic Shooting Centre | ||
The men's 25 metre rapid fire pistol competition at the 2004 Summer Olympics was held on August 21 at the Markópoulo Olympic Shooting Centre near Athens, Greece. This was the last Olympic competition before the major rule changes that took place on January 1, 2005, and which lowered the results of the event.
Contents
The event consisted of two rounds: a qualifier and a final. In the qualifier, each shooter fired 60 shots with a pistol at 25 metres distance. Scores for each shot were in increments of 1, with a maximum score of 10. Targets were presented in series of 5. Each shooter was presented with 12 series, and had a sharply limited time to complete each. Four of the series had to be completed in 8 seconds apiece, four more within 6 seconds, and four within 4 seconds.
The top 6 shooters in the qualifying round moved on to the final round. There, they fired an additional 40 shots. They were presented in eight series of 5 shots each, with each series being limited to 4 seconds to make all five shots.
Germany's world number one shooter Ralf Schumann produced the highest final round ever with 102.9 to easily get the best aggregate score of 694.9 and his third Olympic gold medal in rapid fire pistol shooting, becoming the first in the event's history to do so. Russia's Sergei Polyakov took the silver with 692.7, while he enjoyed his countryman and defending Olympic champion Sergei Alifirenko (692.3) rounding out the podium with a bronze in a remarkable 2–3 finish. Earlier in the prelims, the top three were all tied for the first seed at 592 points.
Records
Prior to this competition, the existing world and Olympic records were as follows.
Qualification round
ST1 Stage 1 – ST2 Stage 2