Tokyo Olympic Games team member, Sergei Evglevski, survived a mid-round stumble to recover and capture the men’s 25m Rapid Fire Pistol gold medal in the BISC Cup at the Brisbane International Shooting Centre today.
Evglevski was in commanding form in the qualifying round scoring a world-class 582 points but faced stiff opposition from ACT’s Thomas Ashmore in the final.Both competitors were neck and neck after the first three rounds of the final before Evglevski nudged three shots ahead after the fourth round.
Then in a stunning reversal, the Victorian lost the lead when managing only one target in the fifth round while Ashmore leap-frogged to a one shot lead after shooting a perfect round of five targets.
Evglevski was forced to dig deep and he responded magnificently with two perfect rounds of five points plus a near-perfect score of four targets in the final three rounds to tally an overall score of 30 points – three points ahead of the luckless Ashmore with Queensland’s Alfio Casagrande (14 points) taking the bronze medal.
Evglevski’s fellow Victorian, Elena Galiabovitch, captured her second gold medal of the competition when winning the women’s 10m Air Pistol final.
Galiabovitch continued her good form amassing 238.0 points to defeat Queenslanders Civon Smith (234.1) and Dina Aspandiyarova (213.8).
While the eventual winning margin was 3.9 points, Smith justified her recent selection in the National Pathways Squad with a strong performance and was within just 0.4 points of the 2016 Rio Olympian at the midpoint of the final.
But Galiabovitch proved too strong and too consistent in the final stages to claim the gold medal.
While Aspandiyarova was unable to match Galiabovitch and Smith in the final, the three-time Olympian will take heart from recording her personal best qualifying score of 572 – six points better than her 566 recorded at the 2019 Oceania Championships.
The full results can be viewed at PSQ Competitions (pistolshootingqld.org.au)
