The 2010 World Champion, Alexei Klimov of the Russian Federation, won today’s 25m Rapid Fire Pistol Men Gold medal, at the ISSF World Cup in all events taking place on the lines of the RAB Olympic venue in London.
The Russian shooter made it to the final with the highest qualification score, proving to be one of the most prepared athletes in this event at this point of the season, when less than 100 days are left to go before the Olympics.
In the final match, when the qualification score is set to zero and the hit-or-miss system is used to determined the score, Klimov simply did great, equalling the current Final World Record with 33 hits out of 40 shots.
Klimov starts off the Olympic season improving his previous result, a second place at the 2011 ISSF World Cup Final in Wroclaw. And today’s medal places him atop of the favourites’ list for the Games, as he said.
“To be the favourite does not scare me that much, I am good in coping with pressure.” The Russian shooter said.
“Today’s final has been easy and hard at the same time.” he added.
“Hard, because shooting is always a competition against yourself and your emotion. And easy, because everything went well: I have been training for this, and if I won it means the work I have done is paying off.” Klimov said.
“Rapid Fire Shooting is all about teaching your body some precise movements. I am running in automatic mode during a competition, there’s no time to think: It simply happens!” The winner concluded.
The fight for today’s Silver medal kept the spectators’ breaths, with the two Chinese finalists Ding Feng and Zhang Jian shooting neck and neck from the first to the last shot.
The two teammates shoot-off twice to brake the tie, with Ding eventually advancing to the Gold match (and then winning the Silver with 30 hits), and Zhang finishing in third with a total score of 26 hits.
The first to leave the match after the fourth series was Czech Republic Martyn Strnad, who finished in sixth with 11 hits, followed after the fifth competition series by Santiago Montis of Spain with 16 hits, and after the sixth series by Germany’s 2008 Olympic medallist Christian Reitz with 21 hits.