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The NTSA regret to announce that it has withdrawn from the SSAI. This decision was not reached lightly, but after careful consideration of the resources expended against very limited returns. It was felt that these resources would be better directed towards the NTSA's own core activities. The committee of the NTSA wish to thank all the SSAI committee members with whom they have worked closely over the years and of course will continue to work with within the framework of the FCP. |
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 Monday, 06 October 2008 |
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Men's 50m Three Position Rifle |
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Written by Mark Dennehy
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Monday, 23 August 2004 |
 In perhaps the most shocking upset of all the Olympic shooting events in the Athens Games, US shooter Matthew Emmons has lost the Gold medal in the final shot of the 50m 3P event by accidentally shooting the wrong target.
Emmons, who went into the finals in second place to China's Jia Zhanbo, put in an excellent performance in the finals, and on his tenth and final shot, the last shot of the match, was in the lead by 2.6 points, needing only an eight or higher to take his second Gold medal of the games (having already won the 50m prone event).
But when Emmons fired, no score came up on his electronic target system. “When I shot the shot, everything felt fine”, he said. “On those targets, sometimes every once in a great while, it won’t register. The shot just doesn’t show up, so that’s what I thought happened”. But officals looking at the scores noticed that after Austrian Christian Planer had fired his shot, a second shot had landed on his target, scoring an 8.1. But under ISSF rules, such a cross-shot counts for zero points for the shooter who fires it, and so in the space of a single shot, Emmons went from an almost assured second Gold medal, to last place in the finals. “On that shot, I was just worrying about calming myself down and just breaking a good shot, and so I didn’t even look at the number,” he said. “I probably should have. I will from now on”.
Emmons was stoic about the mistake. "Stuff happens, that's the Olympics. I shot a cross-fire and didn't deserve the gold medal".
As a result of this, Jia took the Gold medal despite not believing he was in contention for it. “After my ninth shot which was a 7.8 I was worried to have given up any chance on a medal. I just let go and that must have calmed me down to shoot a final shot of 10.1”, said Jia.
“This medal today is a Chinese dream since there was no plan to win a medal in this discipline today”, he added.
US shooter Michael Anti took the Silver medal, but ironically he also suffered dearly for a basic mistake. In the kneeling section of the match, he fired one shot too many, and picked up a two point penalty as a result - a penalty which cost him the gold medal position as the margin between him and Jia was only 1.6 points.
Anti pulled few punches when commenting on this. “We both made bonehead mistakes today. We both kind of gave the gold medal away”.
Christian Planer, whose target was hit by Emmon's cross-shot, took Bronze with his last shot, a 10.6 fired under intense pressure from Slovenian Rajmond Debevec, who had been neck-and-neck with Planer from the start of the finals. Debevec had taken the lead over Planer with the first two shots, but Planer had clawed back to within reach, and on the final shot Debevec's 8.4 was trumped by Planer's 10.6 - however the confusion over the cross-shot meant that for some moments noone knew if Planer had shot the 10.6 or the 8.1 on the target, however comparing the arrival times of the shots with the times at which the athletes fired their shots resolved the conflict and gave Planer the Bronze medal.
Full results here.
No one has commented on this article. |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 26 September 2007 )
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Smallbore Rifle - May 2008
Team IRL scores
