Nicolas Pacheco Espinosa won gold at yesterday's Trap Men Junior event at the 2013 ISSF World Championship in Lima, Peru--triumphing in his home turf and at his debut as a Trap shooter. The 19-year-old Pacheco Espinosa, already a medalist during this World Championship (he had won the Skeet Men Junior silver on Wednesday), had the best of all his opponents with 116 hits out of 125 targets. All tied at 115 hits were Pavel Vanek, James Tarrant and Jan Borkovec: a shoot-off decided the silver (Vanek of Czech Republic) and bronze medallist (Great Britain's Tarrant).
Vanek's 2nd place was primary for Czech Republic to finish atop of the Teams standings, beating Italy and the Russian Federation, respectively, by a 10-target and a 21-target lead.
Pacheco Espinosa's start of the match wasn't really great, several athletes being ahead of him in the scoreboard, which the Peruvian shooter then climbed, shot after shot. He first took aim of James Tarrant's lead after the third round, when the 17-year-old of Great Britain was in 1st (with a 4-target lead upon the eventually gold medalist). In the next round, Pacheco Espinosa got even closer (-3 hits) and finally caught up with Tarrant in the last segment of the game, getting over him and pocketing the final win with a slender 1-target lead.
"I'm feeling very excited," said Pacheco Espinosa of Peru. "There's a lot of competition in my country. As my first time at Trap, it went really well. During the game I wasn't feeling too much pressure because I knew I was shooting fine. Now I just want to say hi to all the shooters from Peru and my family."
In that same round, Pavel Vanek overtook Tarrant as well: the 19-year-old of Czech Republic took advantage of his opponent's poor last shot and therefore qualified for a shoot-off with him and his compatriot Jan Borkovec. Vanek immediately won the tie-breaker (and so the silver medal), while the contest kept on going for the two other competitors, Tarrant beating Borkovec by 3 to 2 hits and succeeded in obtaining the bronze.
Borkovec's 115 targets, still, were important: they helped indeed his country, Czech Republic, to win Team's gold with an overall score of 342 targets--also thanks to Vanek's silver medal and Stepan's 9th place.
Following the Czechs, there was Italy: 332 hits (Miotto 113, Mancarella 111, Meoni 108) and another Team medal after the golden one at the Women edition of this same event.
Finally, the Russian Federation came 3rd with Vasichkin, Veretin and Egorov, whose shots brought the total hits count up to 321.
Here comes the end of the 2013 Lima World Championship, and, obviously, of the relative Junior events, as well. Congratulations to all the young medalists and our best wishes for their promising careers!