Who is Oh Ye Jin? All you need to know about the South Korean shooter who won gold at Paris 2024 Olympics
As India celebrated Manu Bhaker winning a bronze medal in the Paris 2024 Olympics, it was South Korea’s Oh Ye Jin who took home the gold medal at the women’s 10m air pistol event on Sunday, July 28.
After picking up the pistol only six years ago, 19-year-old Oh Ye Jin announced herself at a global level on the biggest stage of them all. Oh scored 243.2 in the 10m air pistol finals, creating a new Olympic Games record and winning South Korea’s second gold medal in the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Oh Ye Jin’s career
Despite her young age, Oh Ye Jin has had a quite successful career so far despite starting her pistol shooting career just six years ago. However, she was far from being considered South Korea’s top shooting prospect before her victory on Sunday, which was a massive surprise to all South Korean shooting fans.
Oh made her national team debut only last year, representing her nation in the 2023 ISSF World Cup in Jakarta. She took part in the women’s 10m air pistol event, where she won a gold medal ahead of Austria’s Sylvia Steiner and Chinese Taipei’s’ Liu Heng Yu.
After tasting international success for the first time, Oh took part in the 2023 Asian Shooting Championships in Changwon, winning a gold medal in the 10m air pistol event. She also took part in the Junior World Championships but had to settle for a silver medal there.
Despite the flurry of medals in the last couple of years, Oh was not a favorite going into the Paris 2024 Olympics. She went into the tournament ranked 35th in the world in the 10m air pistol discipline.
However, once the South Korean shooter took aim at the Chateauroux Shooting Centre in France, she was focused on winning a medal in her first Olympic appearance. Oh Ye Jin made a strong start, overtaking her senior South Korean teammate Kim Ye Ji in a cat-and-mouse chase to the top.
Eventually, Oh took the lead in the match, leaving Kim and India’s Manu Bhaker behind. With an incredible display of precision, She finished the game with a score of 243.2, breaking the previous women’s 10m air pistol event record of 240.3 set by Russia’s Vitalina Batsarashkina in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.