WCF >

All Photos: Marco Della Dea
I
ce, wind and artificial snow did not prevent
the champions from shooting at
their best. “The snow? We have forced
it to fall!” said Ms. Zhang Qiang, responsible for
Beijing’s Weather Modification office, speaking
about the element that affected this year’s
World Cup Final, which surprised the shooters.
The intense snowfall that covered the Olympic
Clay Target Field of Beijing during this year’s
World Cup Final was not completely natural, as
the meteorological officer confirmed. Over sixteen
millions of tons of snow fallen over the city
were “produced” artificially. Beijing’s Weather
Modification Office worked on it, using the
same system used to prevent the rain from falling
over the Beijing Olympic Games. This time,
the silver iodide powder which was previously
used to “make it rain outside the city” during
the Games, was used to keep the heavy clouds
over the sky of the city, as Beijing is suffering
from drought. „We wont miss any opportunity
of artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering
from a lingering drought,“ Ms. Zhang Qiang
confirmed to the journalists „We have used
a total of 186 doses of silver iodide, sprinkled
the clouds to force the snow to fall,“ she said.
“Adding sixteen million tons of snow to our
preliminary calculation.”
Most of those freezing tons of fresh snow
fell over the Olympic Clay Target Field of Beijing
while the Trap and Skeet shooters were going
through their qualification rounds. “Sounds
great! I had never shot before in the snow…”
sarcastically commented Beijing’s Olympic
Champion Vincent Hancock, from the USA,
who shot his way to the final round through the
snowflakes. “I cannot believe it!” Added Dan-
ka Bartekova, a finalist in the Skeet Women’s
event. “You might say it’s just bad luck – commented
Norway’s Tore Brovold, Silver medalist
in Skeet at the last Games – but this Final
comes late in the season, we knew that we
were going to face difficult weather here. You
can get used to shoot in the snow, but it takes
time and training. And this is the first snow of
the season, at least for me. I come from Norway,
what about the others? During the snowfall the
visibility was very poor. And when the sun began
to shine again, it was even worse, due to
the bothersome light-reflection…”
THE MEDAL STANDINGS:
THE SNOW DID NOT AFFECT CHINA
The Chinese team did not disappoint their
fans’ expectations and it experienced a successful
competition, taking full advantage of
the home court advantage. Out of the five new
World Cup Champions, two were Chinese: The
youngest Double Trap participant, Mo Junjie,
obtained the first Gold medal, followed by his
experienced team-mate Liu Yingzi, who won
Gold at the Trap Women final in spite of the severe
weather conditions. Looking at the overall
medal standings of the competition, the home
shooters made it to the top of the rankings,
climbing to the lead with a total of three medals:
two Golds and one Silver.
Three nations, Australia, France and Germany,
tied in second place with one Gold medal
each. Olympic multi-medalist Michael Diamond,
who we rated among the favorites, placed Australia
to the overall medal standings by winning
the Trap Men’s Final on the coldest day of
the competition: shooting eight degrees below
WCF BEIJING
2009 ISSF SHOTGUN WORLD CUP FINAL BEIJING
THE 2009 ISSF WORLD CUP FINAL IN SHOTGUN EVENTS WAS HELD AT THE OLYMPIC SHOOTING RANGE OF BEIJING,
FROM OCTOBER 29 TO NOVEMBER 3. SEVERE TEMPERATURES AND AN EXTRAORDINARY SNOWFALL TURNED THE MATCHES
INTO HURDLES, WITH THE CONDITIONS OF THE COMPETITIONS CHANGING DAY AFTER DAY. THE WORLD’S SIXTY BEST
SHOTGUN SHOOTERS, SELECTED THROUGHOUT THIS YEAR’S WORLD CUP CIRCUIT, AS WELL AS THE ISSF WORLD CHAMPI-
ONS, MET IN BEIJING TO COMPETE IN THE FINAL WORLD CUP COMPETITION OF THE SEASON.
zero, he participated in a shoot-off against two
Italian finalists, later on climbing to the lead to
win his third World Cup Final title.
Beijing’s Olympic Bronze medalist, French
shooter Anthony Terras, earned Gold at the
Skeet Men’s event, stepping up Beijing’s podium
once again fifteen months after the Games.
Qualified during the snowfall, he shot the final
on a bright and cold morning, fighting against
the bright glitter of the fresh snow.
Germany also made it to the “podium”,
thanks to the Gold medal won by Christine Wenzel
(Christine Brinker, before her marriage to Tino
Wenzel, last September) at the Skeet Women’s
competition. The recently awarded World Champion
concluded the 2009 season on the highest
step of the podium in Beijing, and said she is
aiming to obtain one of the first Olympic Quota
places that will be assigned at next year’s ISSF
World Championship in Munich.
THE MEDAL STANDINGS
RK NOC G S B TOTAL
1 CHN 2 1 0 3
2 AUS 1 0 0 1
3 FRA 1 0 0 1
4 GER 1 0 0 1
5 ITA 0 2 1 3
6 USA 0 1 1 2
7 SVK 0 1 0 1
8 CYP 0 0 1 1
9 FIN 0 0 1 1
10 RUS 0 0 1 1
TOTAL 5 5 5 15
ISSF NEWS 21