Australian Olympic Games team member, Alex Hoberg, produced a world class performance when capturing the 10m Air Rifle gold medal at the Adelaide Grand Prix held at Wingfield Rifle Range today.
Hoberg was superb when totalling 249.3 points – a score which would have earned him the gold medal at the 2018 ISSF World Championships. His score was 0.9 superior than the championship winning score posted by Russia’s Sergey Kamenskiy.
While Hoberg’s performance in the final was impressive, so was that of silver medallist, Tori Rossiter (249.1 points), who was just 0.2 points behind Hoberg’s gold medal winning score. Olympian Dane Sampson (228.7 points) was placed third.
In a tight see-sawing final, Rossiter held a slight 0.4 point lead going into the final two shots. Hoberg fired rounds of 10.2 and 10.1 while Rossiter managed 9.6 and 10.1.
Despite missing out on the gold medal, Rossiter was well satisfied having set a new women’s Australian open and junior record in the event qualifying round.
Rossiter topped the qualifying scoreboard with 630.4 points which was 1.2 points higher than the previous records set by Australian Olympic Games team-member, Elise Collier, last year.
Also in great form today was Olympic Games team member, Sergei Evglevski, when winning the men’s 25m Rapid Fire gold medal at the BISC Pistol Cup at the Brisbane International Shooting Centre.
Evglevski fired an impressive qualifying score of 586 which was just one point behind his personal best score of 587 set in the Sydney Cup in 2019.
Evglevski’s score would have been good enough to qualify for the 25m Rapid Fire finals at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games and the 2018 ISSF World Championships.
In the final, Evglevski (30 points) was all class when eclipsing ACT’s Thomas Ashmore (26 points) and Queensland’s Alfio Casagrande (15 points).
Once again, National Performance Squad member Ashmore pushed Evglevski all the way in the final trailing by only one shot going into the final flight of five shots.
Evglevski rose to the occasion shooting a perfect score of five while Ashmore managed two from five.
In the women’s 25m Pistol final, Queensland’s Civon Smith caused a boilover when downing Olympian Elena Galiabovitch to take the gold medal.
Galiabovitch was on the back foot from the outset scoring one from her first five shots while Smith was on target with four shots.
Smith (28 points) maintained the advantage after each stage of the final to defeat Galiabovitch (23 points) by a comfortable five shots with Western Australia’s Siobhy Nicholls (17 points) placed third.
Tomorrow will see the men’s and women’s 10m Air Pistol at BISC while the second 10m Air Rifle event will be held at Wingfield Rifle Range
For full results from today, click here.
