Brazil, USA, Germany, Sweden increase Rio 2016 places

Shooters from Brazil, USA, Sweden and Germany sealed more places for their countries at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games on Wednesday (4 November), at the IPC Shooting World Cup in Fort Benning, USA.

Brazil’s Alexandre Galgani, the USA’s Jazmin Almlie-Ryan and Sweden’s Philip Jonsson all secured tickets to Brazil in R4 (mixed 10m air rifle standing SH2). Germany’s Elke Seeliger was successful in R8 (women’s 50m rifle three positions SH1).

However it was Great Britain’s Ryan Cockbill (211.2) who took victory in R4 ahead of Jonsson (209.5).

Cockbill shot two 10.9s in the elimination rounds and finished with a 10.8 to cement his win.

Slovenia’s Gorazd Francek Tirsek (188.2) was third having been overtaken by Jonsson in the fifth round.

Galgani just missed out on a medal to add to his quota win in fourth, whilst Almlie-Ryan finished in eighth.

Speaking to USA Shooting, Almlie-Ryan could not contain her excitement. “I just won a quota for Rio! Go USA! I went into the final absolutely as relaxed as I could have been.

“Unfortunately the final didn’t go too fantastic – had a few body issues – but I’ve never had so much fun going into a final. Usually my nerves are like ‘Oh my God, Jaz, what are you going to do?’ but forget that, I just won a quota!”

Slovenia took the team gold with Tirsek, Veselka Pevec and Damjan Pavlin scoring a combined 1884.4. Great Britain claimed silver courtesy of Cockbill, Tim Jefferey and Richard Davies (1877.2).

Canada (1864.9) left with bronze, their first medal of the competition, thanks to Doug Blessin, Line Tremblay and Mike Larochelle.

Australia’s Natalia Smith took her inaugural World Cup victory of 2015 in R8.

Smith (441.6) triumphed over in-form Slovakian Veronica Vadovicova (437.4) having formed an early lead.

Seeliger (425.1) added the bronze medal to a great day on the range.

Heading into the third day of competition, Slovenia lead the medal standings with two golds and one bronze. Great Britain are equal with Slovakia and Turkey with one gold and one silver each.

The 2015 IPC Shooting World Cup runs until 7 November and features nearly 180 athletes from 48 countries.

Action continues on Thursday (5 November) with R3 (mixed 10 air rifle prone SH1) and two non-Paralympic events in R9 (mixed 10 air rifle prone SH2) and P5 (mixed 10m air pistol standard SH1).

Photos are available at Flickr.