Unbeaten Dane shoots season best to win gold

Queensland’s Dane Sampson recorded his season best 50m Rifle 3 Positions final score to maintain his unbeaten event record in the 2021 Performance Series competition when capturing the gold medal in the Adelaide Grand Prix at Wingfield Rifle Range today.

Sampson, a 2012 London and 2016 Rio Olympian, fired 460.7 points in the final to defeat South Australia’s Jack Rossiter (457.0 points) and Victorian Michael Davis (442.4 points) in the mixed gender final.

It was Sampson’s fourth successive 50m Rifle 3 Position win of the season and he now holds a commanding lead on the Performance Series leaderboard with a perfect score of 100 points – 25 points clear of second placed Jack Rossiter.

Sampson entered the final as the top finalist after registering 1164 points in the qualification round, four points clear of Rossiter (1160) with Davis (1157) the third best finalist.

Sampson, a Tokyo Olympic Games team member, opened strongly in the final and was never headed.

The event also saw Victorian, Elise Collier, shooting alongside her Tokyo Olympic Games team-mates for the first time since last year’s Olympic nomination trials.

Collier has been unable to travel from Melbourne to Adelaide to join her Olympic Rifle team-mates since last March because of COVID-19 travel restrictions.

In fact, Collier was fortunate to compete today after she and her father were involved in a minor car accident in Melbourne earlier in the week which placed her in doubt to compete this weekend.

Despite the accident, Collier, who will compete in the women’s 10m Air Rifle at the Tokyo Olympics, finished fifth behind Sampson.

Collier is scheduled to contest the Mixed 10m Air Rifle tomorrow alongside Tokyo Olympic Games team-mates Katarina Kowplos, Alex Hoberg, Sampson, and Rossiter.

Shooting Australia