The Junior International was held at Bisley from 7 - 10 August 2023.
With the competitions starting on Monday afternoon, our shooters had Monday morning to get their pistols through equipment control then spend some time on the ranges for pre-event training.
Emilia and Bruce were our representatives shooting standard pistol.
This was the first time that Emilia and Bruce had shot the standard pistol competition and both were delighted to shoot a PB! Emilia came 4th, equal gun score with 3rd Place, but fewer Centre 10s.
Emilia’s ‘clean’ target which scored 50 - showing the 2 centre 10s which cut the inner circle and the other 3 10s - excellent shooting especially when you only see the target for 3 seconds for each shot!
Tuesday morning was 25m sport pistol for Bruce and Emilia. This was only the second time that Bruce had shot a sport pistol match – another PB! Emilia had an excellent shoot – a clean 50 for her last string in rapid- and was in 1st place for that relay. Gemma and Nicola shot in the 10m GP in the afternoon, Nicola coming 4th and Gemma 9th in an increasingly warm indoor range!
Wednesday morning gave Nicola and Gemma their turn to shoot 25m sport pistol. From the 3 relays, Emilia had the highest score for a well-deserved gold medal. Also on Wednesday, Emilia and Bruce shot their 10m GP match. This resulted in 3rd place and a bronze medal for Emilia and another PB for Bruce! And so , on to Thursday and a slightly more civilised start time of 10.45am. All four shooters took part in the 60 shot competition, from which Emilia and Nicola progressed to the Women’s final.
This was good training for both of them and Emilia took advantage of this, taking second place and the silver medal. That was the last competition of the JI – only the prize giving to follow. Many of the medals had been awarded on the day of the relevant matches, so it didn’t take too long to get to the presentation of trophies and a very pleasant end to the JI – Emilia was presented with the Ron Fillery trophy for the highest score (an impressive 291) in the rapid section of sport pistol.
Shooting on the Indoors 10M
Emilia with her Gold Medal
Emilia being presented with the Trophy by last year’s winner Lucy Evans
My thanks to the athletes for their hard work and obvious enjoyment of the competitions, their parents for their support and the whole Scottish Squad for the thunderous applause at the pistol final and at the prize giving! See you all next year!
Janis Thomson
Team Manager