COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (June 8, 2018)
Amber English picked up her second International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup medal of the 2018 season when she won silver today in Women’s Skeet at the World Cup in Siggiwei, Malta.
As English’s U.S. teammate Ashley Carroll said during her commentary on today’s live ISSF broadcast, English is an athlete who continually “gets after it” and continues to dig day after day in her training. That grit was on full display in Malta as English and the other competitors battled not only in competition, but also extremely blustery conditions, the setting sun and a myriad of technological errors.
“The competition was tough,” English (pictured left) said. “By far some of the windiest conditions we’ve ever shot in. It was hard to be able to tell how the targets were actually going to be affected by the wind here. I was happy to be able to sneak out with a silver after tweaking a few things after Korea!”
English finished Qualification with a score of 111 and qualified for the Final in the second position after weathering a three-person shootoff as English, fellow U.S. athlete Caitlin Connor and eventual bronze medalist, Donglian Zhang of China, were all tied with 111 targets.
Once in the Final, English got out to an early lead, holding a small one- or two-target lead over the field throughout. During the pair at her 35th and 36th target, English missed the pair and received a yellow card for holding her gun above the yellow line on her vest. Despite these setbacks, as well as continual issues with the mic at her shooting stand, scoreboard malfunctions and inconsistent wind conditions, English continued to battle. She eventually finished with 48/60 hits, four targets back from eventual gold medalist, Amber Hill of the United Kingdom.
“I appreciate [the officials] keeping the field as fair as possible,” English said of the call. “All I could do is go back to my training and ride that horse until it was over!” English (Colorado Springs, Colorado) also won bronze at the previous World Cup stage in Changwon, South Korea. Her other two World Cup medals were gold at the 2016 World Cup in Baku, Azerbaijan and bronze at the World Cup in Acapulco, Mexico in 2010.
Prior to this World Cup, English said she reviewed her Changwon performance to build on the progress she’s been making.
“I was able to really sit back and watch the Final [in Changwon] a few times on camera to see how quick/slow I actually was versus how I felt. I still have a lot of room for improvement,” she said. English is also a member of the World Championship Team that will compete on that same range in Changwon later this summer. Read more about the Skeet athletes that will compete at World Championships.
Connor (Winnfield, Louisiana) struggled with the windy conditions as well, finishing in fifth place overall with 21 hits in the Final. Kim Rhode (El Monte, California) finished just one target out of a potential Finals berth with 108 hits. This was the first match in which Rhode did not qualify for the Final since the World Cup in San Marino in 2016. Rhode had won gold at the previous two World Cups in 2018 in Acapulco, Mexico and Changwon, South Korea.
The Men’s Skeet competition also started with its first 50 targets today. Two-time Olympic gold medalist Vincent Hancock (Eatonton, Georgia) currently has the second-most hits thus far with 49. Phillip Jungman (U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit/Caldwell, Texas) and two-time Olympian Frank Thompson (Alliance, Nebraska) each have 47 hits. They’ll shoot an additional 75 targets with Final tomorrow evening.
More than 400 athletes from 61 countries are competing at this event. View LIVE scores and the schedule from the ISSF World Cup in Malta: https://www.issf-sports.org/competition ... hipid=2394.
*Photo courtesy of ISSF