Why everyone is obsessed with Olympic sharpshooting style

The 2024 Olympic Games has plenty to offer people who don’t have a clue (or even particularly care) about actual sporting achievements or medal tables. Hot swimmers, for example, and hunting for Olympic tattoos, and those few athletes who deservingly go viral based on vibes alone. Then, there are the outfits – sorry, uniforms – worn by the shooting teams.

It’s safe to say that you’ve already seen South Korea’s Kim Yeji, the record-breaking sharpshooter who recently took home a silver medal in the 10-metre air pistol event. Earlier this week, a video from a competition in Azerbaijan (where Yeji broke the world record for 25 metre pistol) hit the internet, showing her dressed in all black, with bespoke glasses featuring a “mechanical iris” that look like they’ve been lifted out of Spy Kids. 

Since then, the athlete has been crowned the coolest person at the Olympics. Does it also have something to do with her laid-back body language and undeniable main character energy? Yes. But her sci-fi style and lucky elephant plushie can’t hurt. And that’s not the only evidence that sharpshooting represents the pinnacle of Olympic fashion.

See also: Team China’s marksman duo Huang Yuting and Sheng Lihao, AKA the first athletes to take home a gold medal at the 2024 games. For the event, both wore bespoke, cyberpunk-style leather fits in a yellow-and-black and red-and-black colourway, respectively. These heavy ensembles are pretty common, and are designed to support the body and minimise movement while shooting (according to this NBC interview with US gold medallist Ginny Thrasher). More importantly, they make shooters look like Power Rangers, especially paired with their space-age rifles.

Another leather-clad icon at this year’s competition is Choe Dae-han, a Korean sport shooter with an Olympic neck tattoo and a q chic suit, complete with eyelet-studded straps. Presumably, these serve some kind of function, but God knows what. We’re too busy watching Choe Dae-han serve spine-defying shapes on the range, which have seen him branded a “gay little marksman” on social media (affectionately, we think?).

As one former Marine explains in the X comments, this pose is also useful as it can enhance a marksman’s stability. In other words: “Sometimes you gotta be a little gay to shoot straight.” Well, Choe Dae-han actually came seventh in his event, but he’s first in our hearts x

Last but not least, we’d be remiss to talk about shooting style at the Olympics without mentioning the Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikec. In case you haven’t stumbled across the viral photos of him yet, he’s essentially the normcore delegate of the otherwise overdressed event, turning up in little more than a white t-shirt and a pair of regular glasses.

With one hand in his pocket, Dikec and his teammate won Turkey’s first-ever medal in Olympic shooting (no biggie), leading many to speculate about where they found him. Was he a former hitman, plucked from an incognito retirement? A random civilian who woke up that morning and just decided to try his hand at an Olympic sport? Well, no, he’s actually competed at every Summer Olympics since 2008. Why does he go without the gear? “I did not need special equipment,” he explains (via Euronews). “I’m a natural, a natural shooter.” Fair enough!