Queensland’s Dane Sampson will be headed to his third successive Olympic Games after continuing his masterly clean sweep in the men’s 3 Positions nomination final in Adelaide today.
Sampson’s victory has guaranteed him a place on the plane to the Tokyo Olympics even with the final 3 Positions nomination event to be held in Sydney later this month.
With athletes able to choose three of their best four nominations events for selection consideration, Sampson (3539 points) holds a 45 point lead over South Australians Alex Hoberg (3494) and Jack Rossiter (3484).
Sampson again proved too accurate today when tallying 454.9 points to defeat Hoberg (452.2) by 2.7 points with Victoria’s Michael Davis (441.2) taking the bronze medal.
Sampson is also unbeaten in the three men’s 10m Air Rifle nomination events to date and is strongly favoured to claim Australia’s single quota when the final event is held in Sydney later this month.
The bearded Queenslander was delighted to win the 3 Positions quota in such a decisive manner.
“I’m glad to have that done. I’m happy to shoot another competition and I can use that as training in Sydney,” said Sampson.
“That’s for sure me going (to Tokyo) and now we just have to decide on the air rifle. There’s a little bit of relief. One shoulder is relaxed and the other one is still working,” he added.
In the third women’s 3 Positions nomination event, South Australia’s Emma Adams scored back to back victories with a convincing win over Katarina Kowplos and Emma Woodroofe.
Adams (439.9 points) proved too strong in the final standing section to defeat Kowplos (430.9) by nine points with Woodroofe (422.2) relegated to third position after losing an earlier shoot-off to Kowplos.
Adams, who shot a personal best to be the highest qualifier, led Kowplos by a mere 0.4 points after the kneeling and prone rotations but outclassed her rivals in the standing section.
“I had a really good prone today which is good. I felt good and it was easy which doesn’t usually happen for me,” said Adams.
Despite being the runner-up today, Kowplos goes into the final nomination event in Sydney as the strong favourite to win Australian Olympic team selection.
Kowplos has amassed 3425 points in the race for Tokyo – 23 points ahead of Adams.
