Who won the first gold medal at Paris Olympics 2024? All you need to about the nation, event, and more

For the second successive Olympic Games, China has become the first country to win the gold medal. They have secured top honors in the 10m air rifle event in Paris.

In the 10m air rifle mixed team qualification final at the Chateauroux shooting range on Saturday (July 27), China fielded the formidable team of Sheng Lihao and Huang Yuting. The former is a silver medallist in the individual 10m air rifle at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the latter is a two-time gold medallist at the 2022 World Championships.

Lihao and Yuting, who are also the reigning world champions, produced a top score of 632.2 to advance to the gold medal match. In the final, they faced the South Korean pair of Keum Jihyeon and Park Jahun, who had finished second in qualifying with a score of 631.4.

The Chinese started strong and stayed ahead of the Koreans till the end, clinching the gold medal by a margin of 16-12.

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Who won the first gold medal at the Olympics in Tokyo?

Qian Yang in action at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics - Getty Images

Incidentally, China also won the same event three years ago in Tokyo, when the team air rifle shooting event made its Olympic debut. That year, the pair of Yang Qian and Yang Haoran clinched the gold medal.

The Asian nation is not new to winning the first gold medal at the Summer Games. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Chinese shooter Yang Qian took top honors in the 10m air rifle women's final and won the edition's first gold medal.

Russia's Anastasiia Galashina took home the silver medal while Switzerland's Nina Christen claimed the bronze medal.

Earlier, Kazakhstan’s Alexandra Le and Islam Satpayev beat the German pair of Anna Janssen and Maximilian Ulbrich by a margin of 17-5 to win the bronze medal. This made them the country to win the first medal of the Paris Olympics.

Additionally, Kazakhstan has broken a 28-year barren run in shooting at the quadrennial event.