IPC World Championships
USA Shooting Team Earns Two Paralympic Quotas At IPC World Championships
Nerves and big-event jit-
ters took a toll on the 10 USA Shooting Team mem- bers participating in the 2014 International Paralym- pic Committee (IPC) World Championships in Suhl, Ger- many.
That all ended with
a performance from Mike Tagliapietra (Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, pictured below) that secured an overall fi n- ish of eighth place. Shooting in the P3 25m
Mixed Sport Pistol event, Tagliapietra fi nished fi fth overall in qualifying out of 39 competitors but would have to settle for an eighth- place fi nish after being elim- inated during his fi rst series of shots in the semifi nal. More importantly though, Tagliapietra became the second U.S. competitor to earn a valuable Paralympic quota spot for the upcoming 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, join- ing rifl e shooter McKenna Dahl (Arlington, Washington, pictured on following page), who did so as well in the event of R4 10m Air Rifl e Mixed Standing SH2 while fi nishing 20th overall. While excited to earn the
quota, he couldn’t hide his disappointment to fi nish eighth. According to Nation- al Paralympic Coach Bob Foth, the Final got off to a very rough start for Tagliapi- etra when he was unable to hear the unusually quiet
September 2014 | USA Shooting News 45
“load” command before his fi rst series. “He was still loading during the fi rst shot, but got the next four down range,” Foth said. “The new fi nals format is scored in hits, so it wasn’t the end of his chances, but he was cer- tainly frustrated by it. It was a great but painful learning opportunity that he won’t forget.” Tagliapietra has been
shooting competitively since December 2011 after fi nd- ing the sport once again following a 2003 single-ve- hicle car accident that would paralyze him from his mid- back down. He was a com- petitive wheelchair racer be- fore committing fully to the shooting sports. Dahl got her start in the sport in 2009 while attend-
ing Camp Access, a summer camp for kids with disabili- ties in Washington.
Dahl,
who just graduated from high school and moved to the Olympic Training Center last month, was born with amyoplasia, a rare,
non-
progressive muscle disorder characterized by overall lack of muscular development, loss of joint motion and de- formity of most joints. Dahl was the third-ranked woman in the event she earned her quota. IPC allocated six slots for men and three for wom- en.
“She shot a smart, con-
sistent solid performance, not far off her personal best,” said Foth, a 1992 Olympic silver medalist. While the individuals themselves haven’t quali-
fi ed yet for Rio, the quota spots help in the ongoing process of building depth in the USA Shooting Paralym- pic program that began after the 2008 Paralympic Games and had just two qualifi ers in 2012. The two earned quota spots are in events not con- tested in 2012 by U.S. Para- lympic Team members. USA Shooting team mem-
bers also competed in the Falling Target event for Rifl e and Pistol. While this event is not contested at the Para- lympics level, Tammy Dela- no (Rome, New York) earned the highest fi nish for the U.S., placing fourth. More than 268 athletes
from 55 countries competed for World Championship ti- tles, as well as the fi rst quota slots for the 2016 Paralym-
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