Italy's Luigi Lodde won the last Gold medal match of the 2014 ISSF Shotgun World Cup in Tucson, Arizona, USA, beating Stefan Nilsson of Sweden in a shoot-off at the Skeet Men Final, today.
Lodde, ranked 13th in the world, had to fight hard, to win his very first world cup gold medal.
The 34-year old athlete qualified for the semi-final with a record score of 124 hits (equalled world record), making it to the semi-final in the lead. But with the new competition format that has been introduced last year, the qualification score is not carried on: each phase of the competition starts form zero. An uphill road, that Lodde had to climb up.
He cleared the semi-final with 15 hits out of 16 targets, and won a four-way shoot-off to access the Gold medal match. There he met Sweden's Nilsson, 23, but 16 targets were not enough to decide the medals. At the end of the match, the two athletes being tied with a score 15 hits, another shoot-off had to be conducted. Lodde won again, beating Nilsson 10 to 9 his, finally reaching the top of the podium.
“Difficulties make me stronger. I found the right motivation going into the shoot-offs. I zeroed in, and I made it.” The Italian shooter commented.
“It has been an hard competition: starting from the qualifications right up to the medal match I had to fight for every single target.”
The Bronze medal went to USA's first-time finalist David Dustin Perry, 21, who also equalled the current world record of 124 hits out of 125 targets in the qualifications, and then beat Australia's Paul Adams by 15 to 13 hits in the Bronze medal match.
The 2008 Olympic Silver medallist Tore Brovold of Norway closed the match in fifth place, with 15 hits in the semi-final, followed by the current world rank leader Jesper Hansen of Denmark, sixth with 13 hits.
“Last year the Skeet rules changed, and it took time to adapt to the new competition format.” Today's winner Lodde commented. “But, as you could see today, top shooters have been training for it over the winter time. The level is already quite high, and this is only the first World Cup of the year. We will definitely see more high scores and shoot-offs in the future. On the way to Rio 2016, the game is getting hard.”