Published on 05 Oct 2006
Rajmond Debevec strikes gold trough a great remount
Marco Dalla Dea
The Olympic Champion of Sydney 2000 Rajmond Debevec, 43, from Slovenia, played a fantastic final making up his disadvantage from the firsts and winning his forth Gold in a World Cup Final.
Starting the match in fourth, the Slovenian top shooter Debevec, who qualified for this World Cup Final thanks to a Bronze medal won at the World Cup in Milan, performed a perfect round taking advantage of his opponent´s mistakes to jump on the lead. On the road that took him to rise on the highest step of the podium he had to fight hardly against the current n. 1 in the World Rank Sergei Kovalenko, 36, representing Russia. The two contenders played an exciting neck and neck trough the last final shots, bouncing back and forth on the first and the second place almost tied right to the end. The tenth and final shot turned out once again to be the decisive one: Debevec scored an excellent 10.2, while the winner of the last edition of the World Cup Final Kovalenko missed and marked a disappointing 8.4. While Debevec secured the first place, winning Gold, Kovalenko slid down in second where he met and won in a shoot off for the Silver his team mate Artem Khadjibekov, today´s Bronze medalist.
Next to the medalists, this turned out to be an unlucky final for one of the protagonist of this year´s World Cup, the young Norwegian athlete Vebjoern Berg: starting in first with the best qualification score, he missed more than once, eventually sliding down in fifth place, where he closed the match preceding the Ukraine Sukhorukov and the Austrian Thomas Farnik.