The 18-year old American shooter secured the brightest medal with 149 hits, outdoing the 2007 World Champion Achielleos. Olympic Quota Places to Italy and Great Britain.
USA’s Jon McGrath won the Skeet Men event, the last final match of the 2011 ISSF Combined World Cup in Sydney, Australia.
McGrath made it to the final with a qualification score of 124 hits out of 125 targets, and then cleared the final hitting 25 targets. Ending up on the podium with a total score of 149 hits, he beat the 2007 World Champion Georgios Achilleos of Cyprus by 2 to 1 hits in a shoot-off for Gold.
The 2010 junior World Champion had never competed in a world cup final round, before. He debuted in a difficult match, defeating some of the best shooters of the world. “I was not feeling any pressure” 18-year old McGrath said right after the last shot, “I am happy I made it here in Sydney. I will not be competing at the next World Cup Stage in Beijing, but I will be in Maribor, later on in the season.”
Cyprus’s Georgios Achilleos climbed on the second step of the podium with a total score of 149 hits + 1 target in the shoot-off. Achilleos had made it to the final with a qualification score of 124 hits, and then scored 25 targets during the final. The Cypriot shooter, who competed here in Sydney at the 2000 Olympic Games eventually placing in 23rd, had already secured an Olympic Quota Place for London by placing in third at last year’s ISSF World Championship.
The Bronze medal went to Russia’s Valery Shomin, the reigning world champion. Shomin landed on the podium with 148 (124+24) hits, after missing one target in the final round.
The Olympic Quota Places to be assigned at this final went to Italy and Great Britain. Italy’s Luigi Lodde, fourth with 147 hits, won the first quota, while it was Richard Brickell who secured an Olympic qualification card for Great Britain by placing in sixth with 147 hits behind Norway’s Tore Brovold.