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Final 50m Rifle 3 Positions Men

50m Rifle 3 Positions Men – Khadjibekov was unreachable

ISSF World Cup Final Rifle / Pistol · Munich, GER

With 7 points of head start after the qualification, the Russian ace shooter turned out to be unbeatable, in the last Rifle event of the 2010 ISSF World Cup Final in Munich.

The 50m Rifle Three Positions Men final closed the Rifle competitions at the 2010 ISSF World Cup Final in Munich.

 

The match was led since the qualifications by the 2006 World Champion, Artem Khadjibekov of Russia, a rifle specialist shooting for the CSKA club.

 

Nobody could reach or even come close to the Russian Champion, who exploited his huge advantage to control his opponents during the final round.

 

Khadjibekov, who had qualified to participate in the event by winning a Silver medal at this year’s World Cup Stage in Belgrade, made it into the final in the lead with an excellent score of 1181 points (399 in prone, 386 in standing and 396 in kneeling), leaving his closest opponents 7 points behind him.

 

Shooting solidly, he build up his victory throughout the 10-shot final match, finishing on the highest step of the podium with a total score of 1278.7 points, with a 6.9-point lead over his followers.

 

The 40-year old athlete had already won an ISSF World Cup Final in this event in 2001. The next aim of the Russian champion, who has been competing in all Olympic editions since 1996, is now to secure an Olympic quota place, an entrance ticket to the London 2012 Games, during the 2011 ISSF World Cup Season.

 

While Khadjibekov was securing the Cup, Italy’s Campriani and Hungary’s Sidi put the fight for the Silver medal in the spotlights.

 

The 22-year old Italian ace shooter Niccolò Campriani, who had finished on the podium of the 10m Air Rifle Men competition just two days ago, started today’s final match in the top-3, with a qualification score of 1174 points, tied to the 2010 World Champion Peter Sidi, a 32-year old rifle master ranked first in the world in this event.

 

The two opponents duelled throughout the whole final match. Tied at the beginning of the round, they shot head and head right to the last shot, when it was the Hungarian shooter who grabbed the Silver medal with only 0.2 of advantage on Campriani.

 

“I prepared especially for the Three Positions event!” Sidi said after winning a Bronze medal in the 10m Air Rifle Men event, two days ago. And he kept his words, by winning today’s Silver with a total score of 1271.8 points.

 

Campriani finished in third place, securing the Bronze medal with a total score of 1271.6 points. Fighting right to the end of the match, he turned out to be only 0.2 points shy of climbing upon the second step of the podium.

 

Austria’s Mario Knoegler, 31, starting the round with 1173 points, one point behind Sidi and Campriani, fought for a spot on the podium throughout the first part of the match. The Austrian athlete had almost tied his opponents in second place, when he fired a frustrating 6.3 on his sixth shot, falling down in seventh place where he eventually closed his match with a total score of 1268.9 points.

 

Overtaking him, USA’s Jason Parker took the fourth place with 1270.1 points, while the home shooter Julian Justus (22, today’s youngest finalist) ended up in fifth with 1269.5 points after shooting-off Serfbia’s Nemanja Mirosavljev, today’s sixth.

 

 

Marco Dalla Dea

 

ISSF Partners