The 2004 Olympic Champion Alexey Alipov of Russia claimed the last gold medal of the ISSF World Cup in Gabala, Azerbaijan. The 40-year old shooter beat the reigning Olympic Champion Giovanni Cernogoraz of Croatia (32) in the gold medal match by 15 to 14 hits, coming back atop of an ISSF World Cup's podium 5 after his last victory in this event.
Alipov had qualified for the final phase of the competition with an almost perfect score of 124 hits out of 125 targets, and then nailed two perfect rounds in the semi-final (15 hits) and in the medal match (again 15), giving no chances to his opponents.
It's not the first medal won by the Russian shooter in Azerbaijan. Alipov had indeed finished atop of the European Games podium in Baku, earlier this year.
“It feels great to be back atop of the podium,” Alipov said. “The ISSF rules changed after the last Games and it took me a while to get used to it. But finally I made it, I am back.”
Cernogoraz claimed today's silver medal (qualifications: 123+13, semi-final: 14+4; final: 14), as well as an Olympic quota place for Croatia, which will give him the chance to defend his title in Rio, next year.
Bronze went to the 32-year old Italian shooter Erminio Frasca, third with 13 hits in the bronze medal match (qualifications: 124 targets; semi-final: 14+3 targets), enough to bring him back on an ISSF podium after a three-year long absence from the scene.
Frasca beat Turkey's first-time finalist Erdinc Kebapci of Turkey (22), who placed in fourth with 12 hits (qualifications: 124 targets, semi-final: 14+2 targets), securing the second Rio 2016 Olympic quota up for grabs.
Today's final turned into a bitter match for Guatemala's Jean Pierre Brol Cardenas (32), who equalled the world record of 125 hits during the qualifications (a perfect score), and then didn't make it to the medals, nor to the Olympic quotas. Competing in his first world cup final match today, the Guatemalan athlete finished in fifth with 13 hits at the end of the semi-final, just one target far from the quotas. His brother Enrique – a double trap shooter – had claimed both a silver medal and an Olympic spot at this year's ISSF World Cup in Larnaca (CYP).
Brol Cardenas was followed by Herve Boivin of France, a 45-year old first-time finalist who started competing in the ISSF world cup series this year, who took the sixth place with 13 hits.
The Trap Men final closed the 2015 ISSF World Cup in Gabala, the last world cup stage of the year before the world cup finals to be held in Munich, Germany (Rifle and Pistol events, September 1-7) and in Nicosia, Cyprus (Shotgun events, October 15-21).