Belgrade, Serbia World Cup 2010
The majority of the Great British Pistol Team (Mick Gault, Nick Baxter, myself and Peter Flippant the Coach) travelled together to Serbia. Robert Doak from Northern Ireland was forced to travel separately purely due to the UK gun laws. Doak doesn’t have the special additions to his Free Pistol that is needed to legalise the .22 gun in the UK. As a result he was unable to transport his gun from one terminal to another at Heathrow, so he had to travel from Belfast-Heathrow, Heathrow-Frankfurt, Frankfurt-Belgrade. He arrived at the hotel in the very early hours of the morning and departed for home also at 4am!
An action packed trip saw us land on Saturday and me shoot my Air match on Monday. From my 374/400, I took the positives of the way I recovered from a poor 90/100 start through the remaining match (excluding the 7 on my 39th shot, but still shooting a 94/100!).
The knowledge of what went wrong helped me with my Sport Pistol Precision in training the following day and the competition on Wednesday. The competition highlighted particular psychological training is required for the Rapid stage. Shooting a late shot in an otherwise perfect series, 4 10’s, didn’t help my final score!
One highlight of Belgrade World Cup was the opening ceremony. A welcoming speech was made by the tallest man I have ever seen, who turned out to be a very famous retired Serbian basketball player. Vlade Divas used to play in USA for the ‘LA Lakers’ and of course I got a photo with him!
