updated 3:13 p.m. ET Aug. 19, 2004

ATHENS, Greece - Manfred Kurzer faltered in the final round. Diana Igaly flourished.

They both wound up in the same place: the medal stand.

Igaly went a perfect 25-for-25 to win the gold medal in skeet shooting Thursday, finishing with a score of 97 to easily outdistance Wei Ning of China and Zemfira Meftakhetdinova of Azerbaijan.

Earlier in the day, Kurzer had the worst final round of any shooter in 10-meter running target, but his world-record qualifying score gave the German a lead so big it didn’t matter.

“I was never 100 percent sure that I was going to win,” Kurzer said. “From the qualification round I had a six-point advantage, but I started the final thinking like I had (an) equal score.”

But he didn’t. Despite Kurzer’s final round flop, he captured the gold medal. Alexander Blinov of Russia, who posted the day’s best final round, took the silver medal while teammate Dimitri Lykin, the 2002 world champion, won bronze.

Wei beat Meftakhetdinova in a shoot-off for the silver medal in the women’s event, in which the last three world champions made it to the podium. Meftakhetdinova was the 2001 world champion, Igaly won the world title in 2002, and Wei won it last year.

Igaly, of Hungary, won the bronze medal at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Meftakhetdinova took the gold.