Irish Air Rifle National Championship 2004

Sparks

From targetshootingireland.org:

National Air Rifle Championships
Written by Mark Dennehy
Tuesday, 01 June 2004


Phew! Well, it was a long weekend and we're all a little exhausted from it, but here it is folks, the report from the Irish Air Rifle National Championships!

Well, first of all, thanks are due to Geoff Cooney, Matt Fox, and the dozen or so volunteers from WTSC who showed up on a balmy friday evening to put up the range in the Wilkinstown Community Hall. This isn't easy - it's at least four hours of solid, hard, physical work - but the results were worth it. And thanks are equally due to those who stayed behind after the prizegiving to help take down the range and tidy up the hall!



The first day of the Championship was Saturday, and we had a full detail booked to begin with, with all of the WTSC Junior shooters taking part, many of them in their first competition, and some not even that long shooting standing. An Irish Pony Club tetrathlon junior, Susan Cunningham, took part in what we hope will become a regular sight at NTSA competitions, and for her first sixty-shot match ever, shot an impressive 399.

The second detail was half-empty, which we thought would be a blessing in disguise because we had received word - about twelve hours prior to the competition - that some disabled shooters were to be entered to that detail by the NRPAI, but unfortunately, they did not arrive. This was a disappointment, as Wilkinstown Target Shooting Club had secured several thousand euro's worth of equipment to facilitate their participation. WTSC has been working with disabled shooters over the past year, and with the construction of a new range nearer to Kells over the coming two or three years, will be able to cater to them in a better manner than at present. Hopefully, we will see far more disabled people entering the sport in the near future, thanks to the efforts of Matt Fox and Geoff Cooney in Wilkinstown, as well as the local councillors who are helping them to secure the faciliities needed.

The third detail on Sunday was again quite full, though not as much as the first - overall that day saw between twenty and twenty-six shooters. The Army team took part in this detail, displaying once again their standard professionalism. Sean Baldwin also made a very welcome return after some horriffic injuries earlier this year, and shocked everyone by proceeding to shoot the full course of fire and posting a 530, an accomplishement no-one would have predicted, and inspirational to have seen.



Problems with the computer setup caused some grief at the start of the day, and only the arrival of Nicola Murphy saved the day. Alas, the dedicated software on trial with the scoring machine decided it didn't like anyone there, and refused to work! Falling back to the tried-and-true spreadsheet option solved the problem, but for next year we'll get the fancy stuff to work!



The second day of the championships was even more packed than the first, surpassing our expectations of how the competition would go. The first detail was deceptively quiet, with only six shooters, but the second and third details made up for it. Sadly, our RTE coverage fell through at the last moment (literally!), but we'll keep trying! Lindie Naughton, who's regualar Minority Sports page in thursday's Evening Herald has given us so much good coverage over the past years, made a very welcome visit to the competition just after the start of the final detail. After observing for a short while, we gave Lindie a tour of the smaller WTSC club range, then returned to observe the finals and interview several shooters and organisers, for a feature article hopefully to be published in July in the Independent's magazine. Keep your eyes peeled for that one! Lindie was also presented with some flowers as a token of thanks for all of her work over the years by NTSA air rifle coordinator Geoff Cooney.



The finals themselves saw little surprise in the top three, with Nicola Murphy and Rhona Barry fighting it out for the gold medal as usual. They swapped places several times during the qualifying round, but Nicola took a three-point lead into the finals and refused to waiver, and so took this year's National Championship by six points in total. Rhona, however, took the first place in the Irish Open Championship.

The men were relegated to fighting it out for third place in the National championship, with Richard Stapleton besting rivals Ryan Lynn, Declan Kelly and Liam Spillane for the bronze medal. In the Open, however, Richard managed to take second place, and while Ryan Lynn beat his personal nemesis, Liam Spillane to become the Junior National Champion, Liam had his revenge by beating Ryan out of the third place slot in the Open championship.



The final results are available for download here and there are a hundred photos from the weekend in our photo gallery here (and there are more on the way in a week or so when I get the film stills back!).

The NTSA would like to extend thanks to all who attended, participated, helped out behind the scenes with catering, range setup, stats office work, and the thousand and one jobs that never get the limelight but are overwhelmingly important to the smooth running of a competition like this.

Sparks

We got a nice piece of coverage of the nationals in the Evening Herald yesterday. The full scan's a bit big as it was nearly a full page (woohoo!) but here's a thumbnail, and click it for the full scan: