On the final day of the ISSF World Cup event in Rio de Janeiro the Americans added one more medal though it wasn’t the one Matthew Emmons was hoping for. Emmons had won the gold in the 50m 3-position rifle in Bangkok and was close to winning another. Instead he was topped in the final by Zicheng Hui of China who set a new world record with a 463.7 smashing the old mark of 462.5 while Emmons had only a 461.6. Emmons trailed from the start of the final but got within 0.8 points before Hui pulled away on the final shot. Dempster Christenson finished 43rd after shooting an 1153 in qualifying (for reference an 1172 was the final qualifying mark and Emmons shot an 1182).

Finally in the men’s skeet qualifying Vincent Hancock had a strong Sunday shooting 23/25 and was able to hang on to his top six spot finishing third with a 122. Frank Thompson went 25/23 and Hayden Stewart went 24/23. As I speculated on Saturday they both needed 49’s to tie for the final qualifying spot. Instead Thompson wound up ninth and Stewart 13th.

In the final Hancock missed on his fourth target and with the pressure on missed one more on target #12 to end up with 14. That put him a three-way tie for third and in the resulting shoot-off he missed first (on the fourth shot) and was eliminated finishing fifth.

Having wrapped up in Rio the shotgun athletes will have their sights set on the final step in the Olympic Trials May 16th through the 25th in Tillar, Arkansas. The next ISSF World Cup events are split for the shotgun athletes and the rifle/pistol athletes. The rifle/pistol event is May 19th through the 26th in Munich while the shotgun athletes will compete in San Marino from June 1st through the 11th.

Previous ISSF World Cup Coverage:
Day 5 Update
Day 6 Update
Day 7 Update
Day 8 Update
Day 9 Update