Competing for the first time between Senior shooter, Russia's Romanov won the 10m Running Target Mixed Men beating expert and titled shooters with one point of advantage.
The 22-year old Russian shooter Dmitry
ROMANOV claimed Gold at the 10m Running Target Mixed Men event, winning the
first medal of the 2009 ISSF Running Target World Championship in Heinola,
Finland.
ROMANOV secured Gold with a total score of
388 points, finishing one point ahead of the Silver medallist, the Czech
athlete Miroslav JANUS, 37.
“I can’t believe I won! I still don’t
understand what’s going on around me! – Said the
young Russian winner – I had won a medal at the European Championships, last
July, and several medals as junior shooters, but I did not expect I could make
it to the highest step of the World Championship podium”.
Starting competing at the age of fourteen,
ROMANOV had won the 2002 and the 2006 World Championships shooting as junior,
and during his short but successful career he also secured five European
titles. He had never claimed a Senior medal, before.
“I shot a good total score, but I am not
totally satisfied. I know I can reach higher scores, that’s the goal for the
future!” ROMANOV said looking at his total score of
388 points, right after the last round.
The Olympic medallist of Atlanta 1996, the
expert Czech shooter Miroslav JANUS, 37-year old, placed in second winning
Silver with a total of 387 points,
ROMANOV’s teammate, Maxim STEPANOV, 29, finished
in third place winning Bronze with a total of 384 points after outdoing Sweden’s
Emil ANDERSSON and Slovakia’s Peter PELACH in a shoot-off.
Check the results of the 10m Running Target
Mixed Men.
Team podium: Russia in the lead
Thanks to the excellent points scored by
ROMANOV and STEPANOV, the Russian Federation’s team (ROMANOV, STEPANOV, Alexander
IVANOV) gained the team Gold with a combined score of 1148 points, leaving the
Silver medallists twelve points behind.
JANUS’s Czech team (Miroslav JANUS, Josef
NIKL, Bedrich JONAS), secured the team Silver with 1136 points. Seven points
behind, with a total score of 1129, Slovakia (Peter PELACH, Peter PLANOVSKY and
Miroslav JURCO) won the team BRONZE.