Cairo, April 30 (IANS) Italian shooters dominated the men’s skeet final here at the 2023 ISSF Shotgun World Cup, winning both the gold and silver medals.
Gabriele Rossetti hardly missed a flying target with his shotgun. The skeet shooting Olympic champion scored 39 hits out of 40 in the medal match. He also won the men’s skeet title in last month’s ISSF Shotgun World Cup in Doha, Qatar.
“It’s simply amazing to achieve two gold medals in two competitions separated by a few weeks. This one in Cairo wasn’t an easy competition. It was very hard but target by target and day after day, I managed to win,” Rossetti told Xinhua after descending the winners’ podium.
“I worked very hard for this,” he added.
His fellow Italian Elia Sdruccioli was almost as good, recording 38 hits out of 40 targets and earning silver.
“This is a very important achievement for me, for my shooters, for my federation and for my country. It’s not the first time for Italy to achieve gold and silver in the same event. We did in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in a women’s competition,” said Andrea Benelli, head coach of the Italian team.
“I work with very strong shooters, but it is still a challenge because shooters from other countries are very strong too. But we managed to win,” Benelli told Xinhua.
“Like all other sports, shooting is training. Our shooters had to train a lot every day,” the Italian coach added.
The bronze medal was won by Denmark’s Jesper Hansen, who scored 26 hits.
The ISSF Shotgun World Cup in Cairo is held from April 25 to May 5 at Egypt International Olympic City, gathering more than 450 shooters from around the world.
–IANS
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