Learn › Track 01 · Foundations

From 1970 to LA28

For most of the event’s history, top match pistols were spring guns. Pull the trigger and a heavy piston slams forward inside the pistol. Only then does the pellet start to move. Before reading any dates, think about what that means for you, the shooter.

Think first: In a spring pistol, the piston moves and stops before the pellet leaves the barrel. What does that do to the shot?

  • Nothing — the pellet hasn’t left yet, so it can’t be affected
  • The pistol is already moving while the pellet is still in the barrel, so any slack in your hold or follow-through shows on the target
  • It makes the pellet faster and flatter

From championship to Olympic event

Ten-metre air pistol is younger than most shooting events. It started at World Championships, took decades to reach the Olympics, and has changed format several times since.

  • 1970 — Men’s event at the World Championships — The first world title in 10 m air pistol.
  • 1974 — Women’s event at the World Championships — Women shot a shorter match for many years. Both now shoot 60 shots.
  • 1985 — Finals arrive — Before this there were no finals. The qualification total alone decided the medals.
  • 1988 — Olympic debut in Seoul — Men’s and women’s 10 m air pistol both join the Olympic programme.
  • 2013 — Finals start from zero — Qualification scores are no longer added to the final score.
  • 2020 — Mixed team at the Olympics — Tokyo 2020 adds a mixed team event. China wins the first title.
  • 2024 — Paris: head-to-head medal matches — Mixed team medals are decided in matches to 16 points. Serbia wins gold.
  • 2026 — New mixed team format — One four-team final with 24 shots each, scored in decimals. Doha’s World Championships open LA28 qualifying.
  • 2028 — LA28 — LA28 · 14–30 Jul 2028. 29 places per sex in 10 m air pistol. The individual final format is unchanged.

The final that resets

Until 2013, your qualification score was added to your final score. A big lead from the morning could carry you to a medal. Then the rules changed so that all eight finalists start on zero.

Think first: When finals began starting from zero, which finalist gained the most?

  • The top qualifier
  • The eighth qualifier
  • Nobody — the best shooter still wins

That change shaped how athletes train. Qualification became the entry ticket. The final became a separate skill: shooting single shots on command, under elimination pressure, with the scores shown live.

Four ways to power a pellet

The pistols changed as much as the rules. Each new power system fixed a weakness of the one before.

Production years of some landmark match air pistols, coloured by power system. Bars that reach the right edge are still in production. The eras overlap: spring pistols were still made a decade after the first CO2 models.

  • Spring piston. The Feinwerkbau 65 (1965–97) used a sliding “sledge” to cancel the piston’s kick. It was a clever fix for a basic problem: heavy parts moving before the pellet leaves.

  • CO2. From 1982, gas pistols removed the heavy piston. But CO2 pressure depends on temperature. A warm hall means faster pellets, and rapid shooting chills the gas and slows them.

  • Single-stroke pneumatic. From 1988, pistols like the FWB 100 series used one lever stroke before each shot to compress a fresh charge of air. Steady, and not affected by temperature, but you had to pump for every shot.

Think first: Springs move before the pellet leaves. CO2 changes with temperature. Single-stroke needs a pump stroke every shot. Which design fixes all three?

  • A lighter spring with a softer piston
  • A larger CO2 cartridge
  • Air stored at high pressure, cut down by a regulator to the same small charge for every shot

Morini describes its CM 162E of 1992 as the first 200-bar compressed-air pistol with an electronic trigger. Steyr’s LP10 followed in 2000 and was replaced by the Evo 10 in 2016. Feinwerkbau made the P44 from 2006 to 2016. Anschütz stopped selling match air pistols in 2009. Today almost every pistol on an international firing line is a regulated PCP. The main makers are Feinwerkbau and Walther (Germany), Steyr (Austria), Morini (Switzerland) and Pardini (Italy). You will see how each system works in Spring, CO2, SSP, PCP.

Mixed team, rewritten

The newest change is to the mixed team. At Paris 2024, the medals were decided in head-to-head matches. Each round won earned 2 points, and the first pair to 16 won. From 2026 that format is gone.

Think first: The new mixed team final is one four-team contest: 24 shots per athlete, scored in decimals, with the lowest team out after shot 18. What does it reward more than the old format?

  • Winning single rounds against one opponent
  • Steady scoring on every shot, across both partners
  • Shooting faster than the other team

The qualification for the new mixed team is shorter too: 30 shots each in 40 minutes, with the top 4 teams going through. This is the format LA28 will use.

  • World Championships since 1970 (men) and 1974 (women). Olympic since Seoul 1988.
  • Finals since 1985. Since 2013 every final starts from zero.
  • Power systems went spring → CO2 → single-stroke → regulated PCP. Each fixed the weakness of the one before.
  • Mixed team joined the Olympics at Tokyo 2020. A new one-final format arrives in 2026 and will be used at LA28.

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