Chris Hunter, Liam Webster, Vivien Minett
COMPETITION
RESULTS
50 Metre Spring Open Meeting 2023
The BFRC 50 Metre Open Meeting was held on the Malcolm Cooper Range in Lord Roberts Centre, Bisley as usual. After all the issues caused by Covid-19 lockdowns and delays with people getting back into shooting it was good to be able to run a meeting again this year
This year as there were fewer entries than there have been in the past we decided to not use Match Manager, but to sort out the decimal scoring direct from the till rolls. My thanks go to Pam Webber for doing the necessary mental arithmetic rapidly and efficiently so we could enter scores and produce results rapidly with only a couple of corrections required over the 2 days. Thanks also go to the range officers who keep the competitions running on the range with very little time for breaks for food and drink. In particular I thank James Marsh-Brown, CRO, for keeping us all in order. Also many thanks go to the NSRA staff for keeping the ancient electronic targets working. It is clear that a lot of hard work has gone into maintenance of the targets and we had only one equipment failure this year.
As in the past we ran 3 English Matches on the Saturday. This format is even more necessary now because of the limitation of only 30 firing points being available on the 50 metre range. This does allow more capacity for those who want to enter and this year everyone was able to get their first choice of squad.
Conditions for the first English Match on Saturday were very good with just a light breeze, but sunshine caused a few problems as it comes across the shooters face early in the day, due to the range orientation. This did however seem to catch a few people out, but scores in general were very good. Liam Webster took the top spot, followed by Chris Hunter, 2nd and Vivien Minett 3rd.
Note in the results that Alun Evans is an IPC shooter hence not available for the main medal match. However if, in future we get sufficient IPC qualified athletes (as has happened in the past) we will award medals for them as well.
Chris Hunter, Liam Webster, Vivien Minett
The second English match was significantly more difficult with an increase in the wind with variable gust strengths and occasional direction changes. Despite the conditions the top scores were consistent with those achieved in the first detail, showing how good top shooters are at coping with wind conditions. Duncan Farmer came out on top this time, followed by Simon Green and then Sian Corish in 3rd place.
Simon Green, Duncan Farmer, Sian Corish
Conditions improved quite a bit for the third match, as was reflected in the scores. This time Simon Green took the Gold Medal, Liam Webster, Silver and Duncan Farmer took Bronze. We also had 7 juniors in this detail from 2 schools. Kieran McWilliams was top scorer there.
Sunday started off reasonably bright for the 3P event. As there were only 10 entries we went straight into the qualification match to sort out who would go into the final. This is now a 3x20 event and as it progressed the wind gradually picked up making the last stage in the standing position quite tricky, though this did not stop some getting very good scores.
Alun Evans and Richard
Bray are both IPC competitors, hence not eligble for the final,
though Alun did want to shoot for practice. We had space as Max
Moore and Kevin Sinclair opted out of the final, leaving 6 to
shoot. Again Alun Evans took part for practice purposes only.
JJ Culshaw took top
spot with some very consistent good shooting in each disciple
giving him an early lead which, whilst challenged was never
beaten. Graihagh Guille and Lloyd Collins-Page had quite a tussle
for the 2nd and 3rd places, finally taken by
Graighagh pulling ahead in the standing phase. Graighagh aslo took
the prize for best lady.
Graihagh
Guille, JJ Culshaw, Lloyd Collins-Page
Graihagh Guille
Hopefully we will be
able to run a meeting again next year, given enough entries.
I have provisionally booked the range for 13/14 April 2024 with
this in mind.
Full Results:-