[Archive 2008-08-09] Olympic highlights: August 9, 2008

Historical archive — originally published 2008-08-09. This report records what was known on that date. It is not current news; subsequent events may have changed the situation. Wikinews closed in May 2026.

August 9, 2008 is the first major day of the 2008 Olympic games, the below article lists some of the highlights.

The Chinese Pang Wei took the gold medal in the final of Men's 10 metre air pistol. He achieved a total score of 688.2 in the final, 1.2 below the Olympic record of 690.0 that was set in the 2004 games.

The Silver medal went to the South Korean Jin Jong Oh and the North Korean Kim Jong Su won the bronze medal.

By winning four hundred points, the Czech Katerina Emmons equaled the previous world record and set a new Olympic record in the Women's 10m Air Rifle. Four hundred points is the maximum possible score in the event.

The Russian Lioubov Galkina won the silver medal with 399 points and a score of 103.1 in the final shots. Snježana Pejčić from Croatia won the bronze medal with the same number of points as Galkina but a lower score in the final shots.

The Chinese Xiexia Chen set a new Olympic Record with her total score of 212 in the Women's 48kg Weightlifting event. She got 117 of the points from the Clean & Jerk rounds and 95 of the points in the snatch rounds.

In second place, the Turkish Sibel Ozkan got 199 points. 111 of these points were from Clean & Jerk and 88 of them were from the Snatch rounds.

It was a very close finish between 6 competitors, all crossing the line practically at the same time, with Samuel Sanchez (Spain) in the lead, closely followed by Davide Rebellin (Italy) and Fabian Cancellara (Switzerland) in 2nd and 3rd place respectively. Paolo Bettini, the favourite for the gold medal, has drilled during the race, and has reached the 16th place on the final leaderboard.

Sung-Hyun Park, Ok-Hee Yun and Hyun-Jung Joo (South Korean) set a new record in the Womens archery with a combined score of 2004.

The American Michael Phelps set a new Olympic Record in Heat four of Men's 400m Individual Medley with a time of 4:07.82. This time was approximated two and a half seconds ahead of the person who finished second in the heat, the Italian Luca Marin.

Source and licence

Text adapted from Olympic highlights: August 9, 2008 by Wikinews contributors under CC BY 2.5. Paragraphs have been selected and abridged, and formatting adjusted. Contributor history.