Gabala World Cup
By: Kevin Neuendorf Director of Media and Public Relations
Shotgun Finds Success at ISSF World Cup in Azerbaijan
Earning four medals in
fi ve events, the U.S. Shotgun success was the major story radiating from the headlines as a 53-person squad repre- sented USA Shooting during the season’s fi nal Interna- tional Shooting Sport Fed- eration (ISSF) World Cup in Gabala, Azerbaijan August 8-15.
included Sarah Beard (Dan- ville, Indiana), who earned a fi fth-place result in Three-Po- sition Rifl e while Will Brown (Twin Falls, Idaho) collected a fourth-place fi nish in Air Pistol. Those two had al- ready earned a quota earlier in the season. USA Shooting will only be fi lling 13 of the possible 20 rifl e/pistol quo- ta spots available.
Hancock put the Skeet
world on notice a year out from the Games that Olym- pic gold goes through him with another gold-medal run. His form of late suggests beating him next August will be more diffi cult than ever. “This victory just put me
on the U.S. Olympic Team for 2016 and I really want to shoot my third gold medal in
Four-time Olympian and
2008 Olympic gold medal- ist Glenn Eller (Houston, Texas) earned an elusive gold medal in Double Trap competition. Given his his- tory of success in the sport that includes an Olympic gold medal and three other Olympic opportunities along with 14 World Cup and four World Championship med- als, it is hard to believe that it has been eight years since
As of publication deadline, Morgan Craft leads Caitlin Connor and Kim Rhode in Olympic Selection Points by a slim margin after her silver-medal fi nish in Azerbaijan in Women’s Skeet.
All photos by: ISSF
Also earning a medal was three-time Olympic medalist Matt Emmons (Browns Mills, New Jersey), earning a silver medal in Prone Rifl e. All to- gether, the U.S. team earned fi ve medals (two gold, two sil- ver, one bronze) and earned 10 top-10 performances. The event marked the fi -
nal opportunity for rifl e/pis- tol athletes to earn Olympic quotas, something the U.S. was unable to do. Top fi nish- ers in that group for the U.S.
Vincent Hancock (Ea-
tonton, Georgia) and Keith Sanderson
(Colorado
Springs, Colorado) earned Olympic nomination as a result of their performances in Gabala, garnering enough points through USA Shoot- ing’s Olympic Points Sys- tem to earn an outright in- vitation. Those nominations mean those two won’t have to compete in the diffi cult and stressful Olympic selec- tion matches.
42 USA Shooting News | September 2015
a row at the Olympics. I can start planning what matches I am going to be going to, so that I can peak at the per- fect spot: at the Games.” Though the two-time
Olympian Sanderson didn’t win a medal in Men’s Rapid Fire Pistol, his sixth-place fi n- ish earned him the required amount of points within USA Shooting’s Olympic Points System to earn outright se- lection.
Eller last won a World Cup gold medal — he won both World Cup Changwon and the World Cup Final in 2007 ahead of his 2008 Olympic gold-medal run. Not pleased with his most
recent performance at the 2015 Pan American Games which saw him fi nish fourth, Eller put in even more train- ing time than usual leading up to Gabala. His father, Butch, estimates he prob- ably went through 6,000 targets during that intensive training spell with many days leading to exhaustion by day’s end.
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