25 m Rapid Fire: new Final World Record

Sparks

From ISSFnews.com:

25 m Rapid Fire: Schumann won Gold establishing new Final World Record



Today’s 25m Rapid Fire final saw another great performance of the Olympic Champion Ralf Schumann, who shot a great round and won Gold in spite of starting in third with two points of disadvantage form the leader Feng Ding of China.

Schumann played an exciting final round with his usual ease, shooting with an incredible average of 10.14 points per shot. Overtaking series after series his Chinese opponents, he closed the match with a total score of 788.8 points, setting a new Final World Record that overwrites the previous 787.7 that he had established just last June at the World Cup in Milan.

He had started today’s final behind two Chinese athletes: the current World Champion Zhang Penghui, and the new face Feng Ding, 20-year hold, performing today his first international competition ever, who placed in first after the qualifications.

While the young Ding suffered his lack of practice in international competitions and lost ground after the first series, the more experienced Zhang shot neck and neck with Schumann right to the 3rd series, when the German champion scored two 10.8 and a 10.5 going alone on the lead. Ding, missing more than once and scoring with a lower average, wasted his two points head start and landed in third position winning Bronze with the total score of 784.9 points, following his team mate Zhang Penghui who won Silver with a score of 787.0 pt.s.
Fourth place was taken by the current number two in the World Rank, the Ukrainian shooter Roman Bondaruk, who overtook during the first relay the Silver medallist of Athens 2004 Sergei Poliakov of Russia, today’s fifth.
Closing the final’s rank, the Czech athlete Martin Strnad placed in sixth. He had started with the same qualification score of Schumann, but a few mistakes he made during the final round and a low score-average took him down in the scoreboard.

dimebag249

That looks really hard. What kind of groupings at 25m would yield those kinds of scores Sparks?

rrpc

The 25m Rapid fire is very difficult. The qualification round is two rounds of two five shot series at each of 8 seconds, 6 seconds and 4 seconds. What that means is you fire five shots in 8 seconds twice, then the same in 6 seconds then in 4 seconds (30 shots) and repeat again. (i.e 60 shots in 72 seconds) - You do get prep time between each series.

The final is four strings of five shots in 4 second series. (all over in 16 seconds )

From Schumanns score of 788.8, you can deduce that he scored a 586 in the qualification round, and then averaged 10.14 in the final. To score over 200 in a final is some achievement when you consider that each string was shot in 4 seconds!

The 10 ring is 100mm in diameter and each of your five shots has to be on each of five targets spaced at 750mm centre to centre, so you have to traverse your pistol 3m and fire five shots in 4 seconds!

If you look at Schumanns pistol, you will note that it is very muzzle heavy. The idea being that you get less disruption of the traversal by recoil, and can get the pistol back on target very quickly. You also need very strong wrists!

We actually have the targets for this event in Rathdrum complete with red and green lights to start and stop the series. Unfortunately, because of bay divisions we can't actually run the 25m Rapid event. This is a .22lr calibre event btw.

Sparks

If you have flash installed, you can watch the finals on video here, just click on the highlighted image.

rrpc

Just a quick note for the older shooter out there, Ralf Schumann will be 45 in June of this year!

He has three Olympic gold medals and one silver. He also has won in excess of 20 World cups and has a World championship as well.

His speciality is the 4 second final, where he invariably excels. His pistol of choice is made by Pardinin of Italy, the really remarkable thing is that he has managed to stay at the top despite many rule changes including the replacement of the .22 short calibre with the .22lr, a change in the targets and the removal of the vented barrel and muzzle brakes.

Kryten

Just watched the video. WOW Thats a pistol range... I wonder, with the extra revenue from the exhorbitant new licence fees, could the government build us a shooting center like that.

I would like to try that discipline sometime. If anyone out there is running such event, please let us know.

Just one question though. How does the scoring system work? Logically 5 shots is 5 10s, so scores are out of 50 per series. Where do the decimal points come in?

Sparks

Kryten wrote:

Just watched the video. WOW Thats a pistol range.

Yup
But the one in Munich is better...

I would like to try that discipline sometime. If anyone out there is running such event, please let us know.

*ahem*
Weekend after next, UCD Rifle Club...

Just one question though. How does the scoring system work? Logically 5 shots is 5 10s, so scores are out of 50 per series. Where do the decimal points come in?

If you can imagine the scoring rings between the 8 and the 9:

..8.........9..
..|.........|..

You can see where the decimals from 8.0 (the edge of the shot hole just barely clipping the 8 line) to 9.0 come from; the decimals from 10.0 to 10.9 run from the edge of the ten ring to the geometric centre of the target. For air rifle, where the ten ring is actually a dot, it's what we call an inner ten - same concept but not as visible. Basicly, a 10.0 barely clips the ten "dot" but a 10.9 is dead on the geometric centre of the aiming mark, a perfect shot.

rrpc

Sparks wrote:

Weekend after next, UCD Rifle Club...

That's an Air Pistol Competition! nothing like ISSF rapid fire.

If you can imagine the scoring rings between the 8 and the 9:

..8.........9..
..|.........|..

You can see where the decimals from 8.0 (the edge of the shot hole just barely clipping the 8 line) to 9.0 come from; the decimals from 10.0 to 10.9 run from the edge of the ten ring to the geometric centre of the target.

The decimals are only used in the final. Integers are used in the qualification 60 shot match, hence Schumann's 586 score there. The decimals are then used to produce a clear winner, as the likelihood of more than one shooter getting the exact same score when qualification and final scores are added together are very slim indeed.

The closest event that will be run in this country to the ISSF rapid fire event will be the National Pistol match which will be held in Rathdrum sometime in May this year. The dates haven't been finalised yet as we are still testing the new targets and computer systems. (It's a hellish complicated event to run). The event will be run in somewhat the same way as the ISSF standard pistol event, this is as follows:

5 sighters in 150 seconds, 4 strings of 5 shots in 150 seconds, 4 strings of 5 shots in 20 seconds and 4 strings of 5 shots in 10 seconds. These are shot on a single target, the aiming mark is 200mm and the 10 ring is 50mm.

The complicated bit is that you first have a 60 second preparation/reload interval, then a 7 second 'attention period' (red lights on target), shooting period (green lights on target), followed by red lights again at the end of the shooting period. All shots fired after the red light comes on are not counted for score.

We have the targets working properly as of the last test, but we are still working on getting the scoring right after each string. It's just a matter of inexperience, another test will have all the bugs ironed out.

The pistols used are pretty much the same as used in the rapid fire event. There used to be a difference, but since the ISSF have dropped the .22 short calibre, a lot more pistols are being produced that are good for both events. The Walther OSP being one of them.

Anyway, check the NTSA website for an announcement over the coming weeks. Because we are using electronic targets, it's quite a spectator friendly competition as we have a monitor outside the range for viewing scores in real time (nice pictures of targets :cool: ).

We haven't given up on the possibility of running the rapid fire event, it's just that it would require a fair bit of remodelling work on the range.

Kryten

Interesting stuff. The electronic scoring systems are pretty cool. Schumann makes it look so easy, dosent he. I expect air pistol is no easier. I used to have a Webley tempest .22 air pistol when I lived in London years ago. Due to the big spring and piston moving when you fired, you would have little chance of hitting the 10 ring at 10 meters single handed.

rrpc wrote:

The closest event that will be run in this country to the ISSF rapid fire event will be the National Pistol match which will be held in Rathdrum sometime in May this year. .

That an invitation? If so, I had better start practicing single hand shooting.

rrpc

Kryten wrote:

Interesting stuff. The electronic scoring systems are pretty cool. Schumann makes it look so easy, dosent he. I expect air pistol is no easier. I used to have a Webley tempest .22 air pistol when I lived in London years ago. Due to the big spring and piston moving when you fired, you would have little chance of hitting the 10 ring at 10 meters single handed.

Yup, I fired a Walther like that quite recently, bdoinggg..... ohmigod!

That an invitation? If so, I had better start practicing single hand shooting.

You might have to think about a match pistol as well, you've got to hit a 50mm dia 10 ring from 25 metres one-handed

In our last test, one of the chaps was scoring 96/100 with a 20 year old Walther GSP! There's lads shooting prone rifle would be happy with a score like that!

But by all means come along. It's only open to NTSA members, but you could always join if you thought it was your game, there's no charge for watching and the cups of tea are free

Kryten

I saw the write up on Rathdrum in the Shooters Digest. Excellent stuff. That electronic stuff looks quite expensive. While I do shoot .22 pistol and centerfire, I like to take part in all aspects of pistol shooting. Wouldnt mind trying ISSF stuff. Is NTSA membership on an individual basis or club affiliations only?

rrpc

Funny you should ask that Kryten, we're discussing it at the moment. Up till now, NTSA membership was always done on an affiliated club basis, but because of the numbers of new clubs starting up and the fact that most of them wouldn't want to affiliate (different disciplines stc.) we've been discussing ways of including members of non-affiliated clubs in our ranks, if they so wished.

No decisions made yet, but I'd say it's likely that some form of individual membership will be arrived at shortly. It may be just a case of affiliating through an affiliated club (if they're willing) for a small handling fee, or a direct affiliation to the NTSA.

It's the usual problem with these things, try and make it as easy as possible for the shooter while at the same time keeping within the rules, and not causing problems for the persons original club (we don't want to be accused of poaching members).

As for electronic targets, yes they're quite expensive. The ones in Rathdrum cost €25,000 give or take, and the National Lottery funded €12,000 of that. What's annoying is that having given us the twelve grand, they then took €4,500 off us in VAT!

The ISSF shooting is really good, because it's so demanding! You never get bored with it because there's always room for improvement and there's always another benchmark to reach. It's all down to the shooter in the end.