Minna Sinikka Leinonen

In her Paralympic debut at Athens 2004, Minna Leinonen completely turned the shooting world upside down by winning R5 (mixed 10m rifle prone) gold with a world and Paralympic record.

Leinonen was only 23 when she burst onto the scene, but her early success was not to last. In the intervening years between Athens and the 2013 IPC Shooting European Championships, the Finn could not convert her performances from various World Cup events into medals at major international Championships.

That all changed in 2013 with a European bronze in the R5, clearing her nearest competitor by 20.8 points. In the same year, she was named Athlete of the Year by the Finnish Shooting Sport Federation.

In 2014 she went onto win gold in R5 at the World Championships.

Her closest rivals in R5 are Ukraine’s Paralympic champion Vasyl Kovalchuk and Serbian European champion Dragan Ristic.

Leinonen’s was hoping that her motto of “one perfect shot at a time” would carry her to a return to the top of the podium in at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games.

But it was not to be and in her sole event the Fin did not manage to make it into the final. Leinonen will be drawing on her experience from previous comebacks in the hope of making it back to the top again in the coming seasons.