Yang Haoran had just fired the last shot of the 10m air rifle event. The finals hall was packed with local Koreans, clapping and cheering loudly. The 18-year-old from China calmly turned his eyes to the scoreboard, just to make sure that everything went right. Everything was. Yang had won the Asian Games gold medal. And, in the process, he defeated an Olympic gold medallist and a World Cup winner. But his expression didn’t really say much.

On the podium, Yang looked embarrassed after being sandwiched between compatriot Yifei Cao and Abhinav Bindra. He shyly raised his arms – but only after he was bullied by the 20-odd photographers who wanted a ‘perfect’ frame.

Like most Chinese athletes, Yang too doesn’t speak English. ‘But I’m learning; trying to make some advancements so that it is better for the future,’ he says, via a translator.

The 18-year-old is China’s ‘secret’. Rather, he was. In the last month and a half, Yang has emerged as one of the hottest young shooters on the international circuit. In his debut year on the senior circuit, Yang won the 10m air rifle world championship gold earlier this month and has followed it up with a golden double here in Incheon (individual and team). He is also the Youth Olympics gold medallist.

Naturally, the Chinese media is already hyping him as their biggest gold medal hope at the Rio Olympics two years hence. But Yang downplays the medal talk. Shooting is still ‘playing’ for him. ‘I want to play at Rio. I just like playing with my gun,’ he says.

While casually ‘playing with the gun’, he almost shot a stranger six years ago with his father’s equipment. Yang, only 12, had developed interest in shooting after the Beijing Olympics. But his parents were petrified at their son’s new childhood fantasy. They initially forbade him from watching and talking about the sport. But eventually, they budged and enrolled him at a local city sports school, where he was coached by China’s first 10m air rifle Olympic champion, Cao Yalin.

The following year, Yang became China’s junior national champion. ‘He has rare talent. He was among the youngest shooters at the tournament and yet, he outclassed them all. He may not be old, but mentally, he is mature than many,’ China’s coach Zhu Xiao-bo says.

Zhu says Yang trains extremely hard, but not as much compared to previous Chinese medallists. He has bypassed the regimented system of the Chinese and created a style of his own. His IQ level and natural shooting talent sets him apart, the coach adds. ‘We conducted a test on him and he scored 138. It is incredible. So his understanding of situations is sharper than many others,’ Zhu says.

Yang doesn’t understand all this. ‘Just play. Not much thinking,’ he says. He remembers Bindra as someone who defeated his idol, Zhu Qinan, at their home Games. But Tuesday’s victory was ‘nothing special,’ he insists. ‘I need to train like them (points at Cao and Bindra). For big competitions and better results.’