The men’s and women’s 50 Rifle Prone events took place during Day-4 of the 52nd ISSF World Championship in all events in Changwon, South Korea, a sunny, warm, and breezy day.
In the men’s event, it was Denmark’s Steffen Olsen who collected the gold medal. The 35-year old shooter finished atop of the podium with 628.2 points, and a narrow advantage of 0.4 points on silver medalist Stian Bogar of Norway, second with 627.8 points. The Danish shooter had already finished in the spotlights at this year’s ISSF World Cup in Fort Benning (USA), where he claimed a silver medal in the 50m rifle 3 positions event.
Today’s Bronze medal went to Thomas Mathis of Austria, who shot 627.1 points, improving from the 9th place (625.1 points) he recorded at the last ISSF World Championship in Granada, Spain, in 2014.
None of the individual medalists came back on the Teams’ podium, in the men’s event.
Team Germany - led by the 2014 World Championship silver medalist Daniel Brodmeier - won gold with 1869.5 points (Brodmeier, Christoph Kaulich, Maximilian Dallinger). They outscored Team USA (Matthew Emmons, Lucas Kozeniesky, Michael Mcphail) - closing today’s team competitions in second place with 1868.0 points - and Team People’s Republic of China (Zhao Zhonghao, Sun Jian, Liu Gang) - that ranked third with 1866.8 points.
In the following women’s 50m Rifle Prone event, a fraction of a point made the difference in favor of Great Britain’s Seonaid Mcintosh. The 22-year old from Edinburg scored 623.9 points, finishing in first place and winning the title with a thin but vital advantage of 0.2 points on silver medalist Isabella Straub of Germany. Mcintosh and Straub shot head to head right to the last 10-shot series, when Mcintosh scored 104.6 points to Straub's 104.2, climbing atop of the scoreboard.
The medal standings of the thrilling match were not decided until the last shot. Bronze medalist Daniela Demjen Peskova of Slovakia was also very close to the top of the scoreboard - closing her final in third with 623.3 points (0.4 behind silver medalist Straub, 0.6 away from the title) - as was fourth-placed Jaqueling Orth of Germany, with 623.1 points.
Mcintosh’s effort also lifted Great Britain onto the third step of the Teams’ podium. The combined score of Seonaid Mcintosh, her sister Jennifer Mcintosh and Anne Zoe Bruce added up to 1850.6 points, worthing a bronze medal.
In front of them, Straub’s Germany (Isabella Straub, Jacqueline Orth and Amelie Kleinmanns) bagged the gold medal with an unbeatable world record score of 1871.4 points, placing them almost 20 points ahead of the silver medalists of Team Denmark (Stine Nielsen, Maeng Rikke Ibsen and Stephanie Laura Scurrah Grundsoee), second with 1851.2 points.