COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (July 30, 2018)
The Road to Tokyo goes through Texas this week as more than 200 shotgun athletes have descended on the city of Kerrville for the Shotgun Summer Selection match starting tomorrow and running through August 8 at the Hill County Shooting Sports Center.
This match will select the Shotgun athletes who will compete in the first two International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cups of the 2019 season in Acapulco, Mexico and Al Ain, United Arab Emirates. Not only is this match an important training opportunity for the athletes who qualified to compete at the ISSF World Championship in Changwon, South Korea next month, but the World Cups will be another opportunity following the World Championship for athletes to earn valuable Olympic Games individual quotas (Trap Mixed Team quotas are only available at the World Championship in Changwon). An Olympic quota is essentially a country’s ticket to compete in a specific event in the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.
Athletes will have to weather a grueling tryout process to earn a trip to these World Cups, shooting 250 Qualification targets in the Trap and Skeet events, as well as a Final that can earn them additional points based on their Finish.
Action kicks off tomorrow in Kerrville with the start of the Skeet competition and Finals on Friday. Among the 69 athletes vying for tickets to Acapulco or Al Ain will be all members of the Open and Junior Skeet Teams for the World Championship, including six-time Olympic medalist Kim Rhode (El Monte, California), two-time Olympic gold medalist Vincent Hancock (Eatonton, Georgia) and Junior World Champion Katie Jacob (Rochester, Michigan). Read more about the Skeet athletes who qualified for the World Championship. Look for reigning Women’s Skeet World Champion Dania Vizzi (Odessa, Florida) to challenge for a slot to these World Cups as well.
Rhode and her World Champs teammate Caitlin Connor (Winnfield, Louisiana, pictured) will have a busy week-and-a-half as they not only shoot Skeet, but also Women’s Trap at this selection match. Rhode and Connor competed in the Trap Mixed Team Trials for this year’s World Championship earlier this month, and Rhode publicly committed to actively training and competing in all three events leading up to the 2020 Olympic Games.
“I’ve added bunker to my game, so I’ve been shooting quite a bit,” Rhode said. “Hopefully you’ll see me shooting all three shotgun events at the 2020 Olympics, but no pressure, right?”
Trap competition officially starts on Sunday with 148 athletes taking to the field with competition concluding on August 8. In addition to Rhode and Connor, look for all of the Trap athletes from the World Championship Team to compete in Kerrville as well; including 2018 World Cup individual medalists Ashley Carroll (Solvang, California) and Qualification world record holder Aeriel Skinner (Jackson, California), as well as the Trap Mixed Team medalists at the World Cup in Tucson earlier this month, two-time Olympic medalist Corey Cogdell-Unrein (Eagle River, Alaska), Qualification world record holder Jake Wallace (Castaic, California), Kayle Browning (Wooster, Arkansas) and Will Hinton (U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit/Dacula, Georgia). Read more about the Trap athletes who qualified for the World Championship. Look for Derek Haldeman (USAMU/Sunbury, Ohio), who finished in fifth at last year’s World Championship, to also be a top contender for a World Cup slot.
Schedule of Events
Results from this match will be shared on usashooting.org, as well as the USA Shooting Facebook and twitter.