Olympic champion Tao Luna excluded from host shooting Olympic squad

(BEIJING, March 11) -- China National shooting team released the first batch of segmental roster for Beijing Olympics on Tuesday. Olympic champions Du Li, Jia Zhanbo and Zhao Yinghui were included while Sydney gold medalist Tao Luna suffered an unexpected blunder in women's 10 air pistol Olympic qualification event.

Beside the event's world record holder Ren Jie, veteran Tao and rookie Guo Wenjun was about to vie for the only one Olympic ticket to the Beijing Olympics in this event.

Tao scored 689.8 points in women's air pistol to win the first gold medal for China in 2000 Sydney Olympics. But being in a bad shape for a long time, Tao met her Waterloo at the last round by a miss and placed at No.3 in finals, following Guo Wenjun by 8 points margin.

Tao also lost her chance in women's 25m pistol previously and was almost destined not to compete in Beijing Olympics.

To date, six Chinese shooters have been confirmed to compete for the host team. They were Du Li (women's air pistol champion in Athens), Zhao Yinghui (the forth finalist at Athens), Ren Jie (World Cup champion), Guo Wenjun (Doha Asian Games silver winner) and Jia Zhanbo (men's 50m rifle gold medalist at Athens) and Qiu Jian (World Cup Finals champion).

The rest ten places will be finalized within ten days in the national Olympic qualification.