Olympic shooting legend Jin Jong-oh retires
Korean pistol shooting legend Jin Jong-oh announced his retirement on Monday, wrapping up an illustrious athletic career to jump into politics about a month before the parliamentary elections.
Jin, 44, is one of the most decorated shooters in Olympic history. He is the only shooter with four individual gold medals and the first one to win three straight gold medals in a single event, having won the 50-meter pistol titles in 2008, 2012 and 2016.
With four gold medals and six medals overall, Jin is tied for the South Korean lead at Summer Olympics with former archer Kim Soo-nyung in both categories.
Jin won at least a medal in four consecutive Olympic Games, starting at Athens in 2004. The streak ended in Tokyo in 2021, where he missed the podium in both the 10m air pistol and the mixed team 10m air pistol events. The 50m pistol event was not contested in Tokyo.
“I had decided to retire after the Tokyo Olympics. I wanted to put down my pistol to make room for younger athletes,” Jin said at his retirement press conference in Seoul.
“While I was competing in the Olympics then, I decided I should no longer be taking up a spot.”
Publicly, Jin had said in 2021 that he would try to compete at another Olympics in Paris in 2024. He conceded
“If I were born again, I would become a shooter. ”
on Monday that he hadn’t been truthful.
“If I had announced before Tokyo that this would be my last Olympics, then I would have put more pressure on myself,” Jin said. “I didn’t want to put myself on the clock. I apologize for not being honest back then. I had already made up my mind to retire after Tokyo.”
Jin still competed domestically after the Olympics, though the veteran failed to make much of noise. He said he tried to make the most of his final competition in September 2023.
“At my last event, I cherished
every shot,” he recalled. “Since I wasn’t going to be competing again, every shot felt so precious to me.”
Jin has been preparing for a new chapter in his life since the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. He earned a master’s degree and completed a PhD course. He has been serving on the board of directors for the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee and Korea Sports Promotion Foundation.
Most recently, Jin worked as a co-head of the organizing committee for the 2024 Winter Youth Olympics, which took place in January in Gangwon Province.
Through it all, the love of shooting has never left Jin.
“If I were born again, I would become a shooter,” Jin said. “I still get excited whenever I visit a shooting range. If my children want to learn how to shoot, I would take them to a range every week.”
In another career move away from shooting, Jin joined the ruling People Power Party on Feb. 5. With the general elections set for April 10, Jin could run for a proportional representation seat.
Jin declined to answer questions about his political ambitions on Monday, saying, “Today, I would like to focus on my athletic career and I would like to be remembered as a shooter, not as a politician.”