Shooter Kang Cho-Hyun wins first medal for Korea

Kang Cho-Hyun of South Korea won the nation's first medal in the 2000 Sydney Olympics on Saturday by capturing the silver in the women`s 10m air rifle event at the International Shooting Range in Cecil Park.

The 18-year-old high school student advanced to the final competition with a top score of 397 points in the preliminaries, tying the Olympic record, and earned 100.5 points in the final round for a total of 497.5 points for the silver, just 0.2 points behind U.S. sharpshooter Nancy Johnson's gold medal-winning score of 497.7 points.

Four years ago in the Atlanta Olympics, South Korean sharpshooters failed to win any medals. Kang won a precious victory in Sydney eight years after the 1982 Barcelona Games, helping pave the way for Korean shooting to take another leap forward.

Kang, champion of the Atlanta World Cup in July, was leading by a narrow margin of 0.2 points until Johnson tied her in the ninth firing.

She suffered a surprise defeat to the U.S. shooter, who shot 9.9 points in the final 10th shooting, as she finished with only 9.7 points.