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Final 50m Rifle Prone Men

50m Rifle Prone Men – World Champ Martynov claimed his fifth World Cup Title

ISSF World Cup Final Rifle / Pistol · Munich, GER

Belarus’ Martynov won the 50m Rifle Prone match in Munihc, claiming the title on the same lines where he had won the World Championship just two months ago.

The “best prone shooter of the world”, the current World Champion and world rank’s leader, Belarus’ Sergey Martynov, did not delude his fans, and nailed another extraordinary victory today, claiming the 2010 ISSF World Cup Final gold medal after an intense match.

 

The 42-year old Belarusian shooter made it into the final with an unbeatable qualification score of 600 points, equalling the world record for the sixth time in his career, and becoming the shooter with the highest number of equalled world records in this event. Then, shooting solidly, he managed his advantage over the followers by scoring 103.2 points throughout the ten-shot final, ending with the Gold with 703.2 points.

  

“Five years ago I’ve lost a Gold medal in spite of entering the final with an equalled world record, so nothing was sure, after the qualifications.” Martynov commented after the final match, remembering the 2005 ISSF World Cup Final held here in Munich the 26th of August of five years ago, when he eventually ended up in second place “Finals are always difficult. I really did not make anything special to prepare myself, I just shot as good as I could.”

This victory concluded Martynov’s great season. In spite of struggling to finish on the podium of the first world cup stages of the year, the 42-year old Belarusian shooter proved to be the best prone shooter of the world at the last ISSF World Championship, held here in Munich last August. Shooting on the same lines, he won the World Champion title, becoming the first athlete of the ISSF history to win two World Championship Rifle Prone gold medals (he had led also the 2006 edition in Zagreb).

 

The next aim? “I am shooting for Gold, and the focus is now on the Olympic Games”, as Martynov had said here in Munich. After winning five World Cup Finals and two World Championships, Sergei wants indeed to go for the only trophy he is missing, the most important, the Olympic Gold.

 

Martynov turned out to be unreachable, today, but the last three shots of the match kept the spectator’s breath, as they decided the podium placements behind the champion, with four shooters ending up with a difference of 0.7 points, tenths of a millimetre on a 50m Rifle Prone target.

 

105.7 points, today’s best final score, were not enough to grab the Gold medal. Norway’s Vebjoern Berg, the title defender, winner of the 2009 World Cup Final in Wuxi, qualified in seventh place with 596 points, and then climbed up the scoreboard with a series of excellent shots. Fighting against Starik, Rothmund and Junghaenel throughout the whole final round, he totalized that outstanding final score, and eventually landed in second place thanks to a last shot of 10.6 points, with a total score of 701.7 points.

 

Germany’s Henri Junghaenel, 22-year old, one of the youngest participants, followed him in third place. He had qualified to participate in this ISSF World Cup Final by finishing on the podium of the Beijing’s World Cup Stage, where he had won his first world cup medal ever.  Starting today’s final in second place with 598 points, he fought against Berg since the first shots, sliding then in third place at the last shot, where he landed with 701.5 points and the Bronze.

 

Junghaenel beat by 0.1 points the second German shooter, his teammate Armin Rothmund, whose best World Cup placement had been a fifth place at this year’s Fort Benning’s Stage. The 31-year old athlete eventually ended up in fourth place, with a last shot of 10.1, and a total score of 701.4 points, just 0.1 far from the first international podium of his career.

 

Following just tenths behind them, the experienced Israeli champion Guy Starik, 45, finished in fifth place. Qualified for the final match in third place with a qualification score of 597 points, he duelled against the two German teammates and the Norwegian Silver medallist right to the end, eventually finishing in fifth place with 701.0 points.

 

Australia’s Warren Potent, USA’s Joseph Hein and India’s Joydeep Karmar closed the match in sixth, seventh and eighth place, respectively.

Marco Dallla Dea

 

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