Victoria’s Sergei Evglevski took an important first step towards his Olympic dream when winning the gold medal in the men’s 25m Rapid Fire pistol in the Tokyo Olympic Games nomination trials at the Brisbane International Shooting Centre today.
In the first of two Tokyo Olympic Games 25m Rapid Fire Pistol events to be held this weekend, Evglevski recorded 31 points to defeat ACT’s Thomas Ashmore (24 points) with West Australia’s Scott Anderson (18) earning the bronze medal.
Evglevski, who won the silver medal in the event at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games, is the son of six-time Olympian Lalita Yauhleuskaya and he is aiming to follow in his mother’s sizeable Olympic footsteps.
The final was delayed by two hours because of technical issues and had to be moved to a different site, before there was another 20 minute technical disruption midway through the decider.
“That wasn’t ideal, but you have to deal with things like that. I just tried to forget about it,” said Evglevski.
Evglevski said he felt comfortable in the final and used motivational phrases to maintain his concentration.
“I told myself to be tougher and push harder,” he said. “But I think I lost focus after the second interruption.”
Evglevski fired a world class qualifying score of 583 points out of a possible 600, including consecutive rounds of 98, 99 and 98 out of 100 in the second stage.
“I wasn’t nervous, but I didn’t think my attitude was right in the first half of qualifying,” he said.
Earlier, Victoria’ Elena Galiabovitch, a 2016 Olympian and a 2018 Commonwealth Games silver and bronze medallist, claimed the women’s 10m Air Pistol in a dominant display.
Although qualifying second behind three-time Olympian, Queensland’s Dina Aspandiyarova, Galiabovitch was untroubled when registering 239.3 points to outshoot NSW’s Dannielle Moleman (235) and Aspandiyarova (212).
The highlight of Galiabovitch’s performance was a perfect 10.9 with six shots remaining.
Aspandiyarova seemed certain to earn the silver medal but fired a score of 8.2 with her second last shot.
Moleman jumped ahead of her with a brilliant 10.6 to avoid elimination and go into the race for the gold medal but was unable to overhaul.
