At 43, Russian Federation’s Vasily Mosin finally grabbed one of the few awards he was missing: the World Championship Gold medal in the Double Trap Men event. He did it in Lonato (ITA), where he prevailed over Great Britain’s Tim Kneale in the Gold medal match after they both shot perfectly for the first six doubles. After two close mistakes by the British shooter, however, Mosin built a comforting lead, closing the Gold medal match with 29 hits against Kneale’s 26.
"Since I came here for the first time in 1995 I have been dreaming about winning a championship in Lonato,” said Mosin. "Finally, my dream came true. It's an amazing feeling to win this title in front of my friends, of my sponsors, and the whole shooting sport family.”
"This range is amazing, but at the same time it's very difficult. I put a lot of efforts into this competition, coming here 11 days in advance to train and to get used to the facility.” Continued Mosin, before concluding with a fire-extinguishing quote about Rio 2016: ”The Olympic Games? The Olympic Games are still far away."
As Mosin already collected a Rio 2016 spot in Al-Ain (UAE) during this year’s World Cup, Kneale pocketed an Olympic quota place for his country along with the Silver medal.
Both Kneale and Mosin shot outstandingly since the qualification round, where they finished with the two best score, 142 and 140 respectively, booking a spot in the semifinal along with Australia’s James Willett and Qatar’s Rashid Al-Ahba, both with 139. In a three-way shoot-off that was required to assign the two remaining semifinal tickets, USA’s Walton Eller and Kuwait’s Ahmad Alafasi bested Maltese shooter William Chetcuti.
In the semifinal round Mosin led the group since the first doubles, and despite missing his very last target he still concluded in 1st position with 28 hits, while Kneale, shuttering 19 of his last 20 clays, climbed into the second position and earned his spot in the Gold medal match.
Another tie-breaking shoot-off between three athletes was necessary to determine the Bronze medal match participants, as Willett, Alafasi and Al-Athba all concluded the semifinal with 26 points.
An early mistake from the Qatari shooter opened the way for the Australian and the Kuwaiti, who took part in a third shoot-off to decide the Bronze medallist after they concluded with 24 hits each. Alafasi, the Silver medallist at the 2014 Asian Championship, won the tie-breaker by 4 hits to 3, enhancing the Bronze medal with the second Olympic quota place up for grabs at this event.
The 2008 Olympic Gold medallist, United States’ Walton Eller, concluded the semifinal in 6th place with 24 hits.
In the team competition, Kneale, Matthew John Coward-Holley and Matthew French led Great Britain to the Gold medal with a total of 414 points, followed by the Russian Federation’s team composed by Mosin, Vitaly Fokeev and Artem Nekrasov with 406. On the third step of the team’s podium, finally, India were represented by Asab Mohd, Ankur Mittal and Sangram Dahiya, who concluded the qualification with a total of 400 points.
The World Championship will continue tomorrow with the Skeet Men pre-event training, and it will conclude on Thursday with the Skeet Men final, scheduled at 5:15 PM (GMT+2), and with the Skeet Men Junior final at 6:15 PM (GMT+2).