China's national shooting team holds online competition to prepare for Tokyo 2020

A two-day first-ever online competition between athletes from China's national shooting team and four provincial teams concluded on Saturday.

This is the first time in China that a sports competition is held completely online in different locations.

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, sports teams are training behind closed doors for Tokyo 2020, for which China secured a full 20 berths in the shooting competition. The national team and teams from Shanxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai joined the competition in their respective training bases through online live broadcast.

In the 10m air pistol competitions on Friday, Wang Mengyi won the men's competition with a result of 244.8 points while 2018 world team champion Jiang Ranxin triumphed in the women's section with 245.2 points.

On Saturday, 2014 Youth Olympics champion Yang Haoran safely claimed the men's 10m air rifle victory with 253.2 points while Yang Qian won the women's competition.

"We focused on physical training during the winter training and this online competition proved it fruitful," said Li Jinsong, deputy director of the Shooting and Archery Management Center.

According to Li, the roster for Tokyo 2020, originally scheduled to be decided in February, will be finalized in May due to the coronavirus outbreak.