Spain’s Fatima Galvez and Albert Fernandez, winners of the mixed trap team title at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, just missed a golden double on day two of the ISSF World Cup in Cairo.
In the first of six World Cups scheduled for this Olympic season, the 40-year-old Fernandez, pictured, won the men’s trap title by one shot, 42-41, after Italy’s Diego Valeri had missed his last effort.
Earlier in the women’s trap final there was a similarly dramatic finale, but on this occasion it was the 35-year-old Galvez who missed her last shot, giving Kazakhstan’s Mariya Dmitriyenko the chance to earn a 40-39 victory by scoring with her 50th and final effort.
Fernandez, winner of the men’s trap world title in 2010 and 2018, brought all his experience to bear at the shotgun range of the Egypt International Olympic City as rainy and windy conditions made shooting tricky.
His 27-year-old Italian opponent, who had topped qualifying along with Turkey’s Tolga Tuncer on 121, led by a shot at the halfway point.
But the two pacesetters swapped the lead over the final 25 shots before arriving for the final before standing side by side for their final five shots tied at 37-37.
Bronze went to Turkey’s 41-year-old four-time Olympian Oguzhan Tuzun, who won his first World Cup title in 2005 and his most recent one in Doha last year.
Tuzun, who finished third in qualifying, was one place ahead of Valeri’s 31-year-old compatriot Valerio Grazini, a World Cup winner back in 2013.
Tuncer finished fifth, with sixth place going to Finland’s 22-year-old Juho Maekelae, a world junior bronze medallist in 2022.
Galvez, a nurse by profession, arrived at the first medal round trailing Dmitriyenko and San Marino’s Alessandra Perilli by one shot.
The Kazakh shooter totalled 33 from her first 40 shots, but a miss with her 40th effort by Perilli dropped her down to 32, level with Galvez.
That meant the 35-year-old San Marino shooter, who won mixed trap silver behind Galvez and Fernandez at the Tokyo Olympics, took bronze, as she had taken the last available qualifying place while Galvez had gone through in third place.
Then came the last 10 shots – and the dramatic finale.
Turkey’s Rumeysa Kaya finished fourth, with fifth place going to Augusta Campos-Martyn of Puerto Rico and Poland’s Sandra Bernal taking sixth place.