TEHRAN - Najmeh Khemati, Iranian female shooter, believes that she has had a satisfying performance in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Khedmati, 25, finished 18th in the qualification round of the women’s 50m rifle 3 positions event at the 2020 Summer Olympics, which took place on 31 July 2021 at the Asaka Shooting Range. She failed to qualify for the final round of the competition and left Tokyo early.

However, the Iranian shooter is satisfied with her performance at the Tokyo Olympics.

“I thought I did well in the competition. Obviously, I went to Tokyo with the mindset of getting a good result for Iran, but I was satisfied with my overall performance. Given the high scores of the other shooters, I can say that I shot well,” Khedmati said in her interview with Tehran Times.

Of the seven sharpshooters Iran sent to the Olympics, four were women as Khedmati was joined by Fatemeh Karamzadeh, Hanieh Rostamian, and Armina Sadeghian.

Khedmati finished sixth in the qualification round of the Rio 2016 Olympics and qualified for the final stage, where she ended in the eighth position.

She was one of the first athletes to win the Olympics quota and was supposed to represent Iran in 10m Air Rifle. Still, the Iranian shooting federation decided that Khedmati would compete in the 50m rifle (3 positions) event, which is not her favored distance after all. Few expected to see her challenge for a medal.

“It was my second experience at the Olympic Games. I preferred to compete in 10m Air Rifle due to my good result, but the federation thought differently.

“We had problems in terms of having standard sport shooting bullets due to international sanctions against Iran. However, the federation did its best to provide facilities for us. We had a good training camp in Hungary, and there we used the standard bullets. But it was just two months before the Olympics, and if we had more time training with professional bullets, we would have got better scores in Tokyo,” Khedmati added.

After 165 minutes and 120 shots, she found herself crashing out of the qualification stage in 18th position, with a total score of 1165-52x.