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Shotgun Spotlight on Youth: round-up before Lima (Trap and Double Trap)

ISSF World Championship Shotgun · Lima, PER

Summary of the shotgun athletes' performances so far this year - right before the World Championship, kicking off on Sept. 14 in the capital of Peru.

As the ISSF Shotgun World Championship gets closer - it will be contested from 14 to 25 September 2013 in Lima, Peru - it's actually time to take stock of the situation, before moving on to such an important event: who were the best young shooters who took part in any of the 2013 ISSF World Cup stages?

We've talked about them in our Spotlight on Youth articles throughout the year, but let's get a recap, divided by discipline: another feature (coming out on Wednesday) will be about Skeet; now, we'll deal with Double Trap and Trap. Here we go!


DOUBLE TRAP
MEN

Ian Rupert - "Quick and easy." That is how Double Trap seems like to USA's 19-year-old Rupert. It must have come as no surprise, then, for him to win the bronze medal match in Acapulco, outdoing India’s Asab Mohd 25 to 24 hits. That was Rupert's debut in a final phase of a seniors’ competition (he had taken part in  the 2010 and 2011 ISSF World Championships, coming sixth and seventh in the junior category). First try, first podium.

A great day right from the beginning for Rupert, who - as the youngest competitor - had qualified to the final round of the event with a new World Record of 136 hits. His secret? Lot of work. “I do train a lot - Ian said -. Recently, I went down to Fort Benning, Georgia with my team for a couple of weeks and got a lot of good training there.”

Rupert found the right formula: quick and easy. And the USA Team can be just happy about it.


TRAP
WOMEN

Ashley Carroll - A fifth place doesn't tell everything. That's what Carroll got in Granada, but that leaves much to say about it: first, the 18-year-old, from Solvang, California - "a little Danish town", as she said - had made it to the final after a brilliant (72 hits out of 75 targets) qualification round and a final shoot-off; second, Ashley - before the competition day - has been stuck 4 days without her shotgun, and she only had it back one day before the match - after it had got lost in some airport on its way to Granada; third and last argument, that was her debut in an ISSF final round.

Looks like a long story? It is. And you can actually check it out here.


Laetisha Scanlan 
- In Al Ain, Australia did just fine - proudly bringing two athletes from their team to the gold medal match. The 23-year-old Scanlan. then, had the best of her teammate Catherine Skinner, beating her by 14 hits to 10.

Laetisha - at her debut in an ISSF World Cup medal match - only missed 3 targets throughout the whole day, finally coming to the gold medal. But the young Australian focused on Australia: "“We got a lot of juniors and developing people - Scanlan said - that are making teams and shooting well enough to compete against important athletes.
It's great for the sport, it's great for Aussie and I'm really happy about it!”

A bright future seems to be there for Australia. And for Laetisha, of course.


Silvana Stanco
 - The 20-year-old of Italy couldn't ask for more: two medals (bronze in Mexico, gold in Cyprus) in just four months (from March to June), at her very first two appearances in an ISSF World Cup.

In Acapulco, as a first-time competitor, Silvana beat Germany's Jana Beckmann 13 hits to 10 in the bronze medal match, which was then contested for the first time in the ISSF history; in Nicosia, she did even better: gold, overcoming Catherine Skinner of Australia. And with an impressive lack of training, because of her college life: "I really couldn't make it to the range but on the weekends, lately. From Monday to Friday, I'd be either going to classes or studying!"

Jessica Rossi was on the same podium as Silvana Stanco in that World Cup stage (the Olympic Champion came second), and - even if that would have been an odd forecast just at the beginning of this year - now, the two of them are actually in a race for Rio 2016: Silvana got an important role in the Italian Team, and Mr. Pera – the coach – will pass through hard times when it will be time to decide who's going to wear Italy's uniform at the next Olympic Games. Nobody can forget Jessica Rossi's performance in London 2012, but - at least - she now has  a brilliant team opponent.

Silvana Stanco: 2013 was just magic.

Alessandro Ceschi

 

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