USA Shooting Team Closes Granada World Cup with Two Medals, Eight Finalists, and 18 Top 15 Performances
OutdoorHub 07.12.13
While the hardware coming back through U.S. customs won’t be particularly bountiful, the results of the 2013 Granada (Spain) World Cup for the USA Shooting Team still showcased a team of strength and potential. The final International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup of the year featured over 1,028 athletes from 78 countries and Team USA walked away two medals, eight finalists and 18 top-15 performances.
Medals earned among the 48 team members, both bronze, included two-time shotgun Olympian Corey Cogdell (Eagle River, Alaska) and five-time pistol Olympian Emil Milev (Temple Terrace, Fla.). Cogdell tied the World Record mark of 74 in qualifying and was leading by three targets before falling slightly in the new zero-start finals format. Cogdell’s shotgun teammates Jeff Holguin (double trap/Yorba Linda, Calif.), Ashley Carroll (trap/Solvang, Calif.) and Jake Wallace (trap/Castiac, Calif.) finished just outside the medal hunt with fourth, fifth and sixth-place finishes, respectively.
Rifle athletes Sarah Scherer (Worster, Mass.) and Connor Davis (Shelbyville, Ky.) made their event finals in air rifle while two-time pistol Olympian Keith Sanderson (Kailua, Hawaii) earned a trip back to the finals after a fifth-place result in the Ft. Benning, Ga., World Cup.
The highlights included several near misses including three top-10 performances during Wednesday’s events alone. Jason Parker (Omaha, Neb.) missed finals by one point in Three-Position Rifle finishing ninth while Will Brown (Twin Falls, Idaho) earned his third top-10 performance in three World Cup events, including a gold medal in air pistol, with a 10th-place finish again in air pistol. Brown actually had the same exact qualifying score as two other finalists but was eliminated on a tiebreaker which counts total perfect scores over 60 shots. Brown had 21, better than four of the eight finalists, but not more than the people he was chasing for a shot in the finals. In just her third World Cup, Morgan Craft (Muncy Valley, Pa.) finished one target out in Women’s Skeet. Another notable included Women’s Skeet shooter Dania Vizzi (Odessa, Fla.) who impressed the field after scoring a new Junior World Record with a score of 73/75. Vizzi, shooting in the MQS (extra shooter) category, continued a red-hot July after recently winning a National Junior Olympic title as well.
Two-time Olympic medalist Vincent Hancock (Eatonton, Ga.) proved that he is indeed human after a faulty second round 22 in the Men’s Skeet competition left him off his normal pace. He finished with a 119 total and missed the Finals by three targets.
After his round was complete Thursday, Hancock to Twitter to proclaim: “You got the best of me this time Granada… But next year I’ll be back & I’ll be ready. #yeartotrain.”
Of course, Hancock’s talking about the upcoming 2014 ISSF World Championships which are also scheduled to take place in Granada next September.
China finished atop of the overall medal standings of the last World Cup Stage of the season, where 15 events in Rifle, Pistol and Shotgun disciplines were staged. China ended up in first with an impressive total of nine medals (four gold, three silver and two bronze). Italy finished in second, with three gold and two silver, for a total of five medals (three won in Shotgun events). Korea secured third place on the medals board with two gold and one bronze.
Three new World Records were set (50m Rifle Prone Men, 10m Air Rifle Women and Skeet Women events); two World Records were equaled (Trap Women and Skeet Men events); and two new World Records Junior were established (50m Rifle Prone Men and 10m Air Rifle Women events).
For complete ISSF World Cup Granada World Cup results, click here: http://bit.ly/13EhsPK
The best athletes, selected through seven World Cup stages in Acapulco (MEX), Changwon (KOR), Al Ain (UAE), Fort Benning (USA), Munich (GER), Nicosia (CYP) and finally Granada (ESP), will now meet at the end of the season at the ISSF World Cup Finals. The ISSF Shotgun World Cup Final will be held in Abu Dhabi (UAE), October 21-29. The Rifle and Pistol World Cup Final will be hosted at the 1972 Olympic Shooting Range of Munich, Germany, in November 6-12.
In the seven ISSF World Cups held in 2013, USA Shooting Team athletes earned eight medals overall including two gold (Will Brown, pistol // Vincent Hancock , shotgun), three silver (Dempster Christenson & Michael McPhail, rifle // Brian Burrows, shotgun), three bronze (Corey Cogdell & Ian Rupert, shotgun // Emil Milev, pistol). In addition, the USA Shooting Team also had 22 team members reach the finals in those seven World Cup events.
U.S. Shotgun team members are busily preparing for the upcoming 2013 USA Shooting National Championships, September’s World Clay Target Championships in Lima, Peru, and the Fall Selection Match. The rifle/pistol disciplines seek a much deserved break from action and wait for USA Shooting’s Winter Airgun Championships in November and the Rocky Mountain Rifle Championships in February 2014.
