Today's youngest finalist, Mickael D'Halluin, 22, from France, made his debut appearance at the 50m Rifle Prone Men event. And what a debut! The young French shooter immediately moved up in the scoreboard, nailing a series of great shots, such as a 10.9 on his 14th competition shot.
D'Halluin fought head and head against 23-year old Thomas Mathis of Austria, exchanging positions atop of the scoreboard several times during the match.
The two young athletes dueled almost tied right to the last shot. The pressure was high, but D'Halluin managed to gain a bit of margin on his follower throughout the last four shot. Just a few tenths. Not much, but enough to win the contest with a narrow difference of 0.1 points, in spite of closing the round with a spine-chilling 9.9-point shot.
Thomas Mathis did not take advantage of his opponent's mistake: closing the match with a 10. shot, he secured the Silver medal with 207.2 points, pocketing his first ISSF World Cup medal ever.
The Bronze medal went to the reigning ISSF Wolrd Cup champion, the 2012 Olympic Bronze medallist Rajmond Debevec of Slovenia, 50. The experienced shooter made it to the final in last place, with a qualifications score of 622.2 points, but than started moving up in the scoreboard by firing great shots. The climber ended up at the third place, with a final score of 186.2 points.
Italy's four-time Olympian Marco De Nicolo, 36, finished only 0.6 points far the podium. De Nicolo usually shoots at his best on the lines of his home-range, in Milan, Italy, where he has won three ISSF World Cup medals since 2001. But the Italian shooter also knows Munich's shooting range very well. Here, he had won a world cup Silver medal last year. Today, he could not repeat that performance, closing the round in fourth with 164.3 points.
Even more frustrating was the final result of Korea's 32-year old Choi Young Jeon, who qualified in first, with 625.9 points. The Korean shooter had never made it to an ISSF world cup stage final match, outside of Korea, before. Paying his lack of experience, Choi was the first to be eliminated, after the eighth final shot, and placed in eighth with a final score of 81.2 points.
On the other side, one of the most experienced rifle shooters of the world, Serbia's five-time Olympian Nemanja Mirosavljev (43) followed him, leaving the match after the tenth shot with a final score of 102.4 points, loosing the neck-and-neck fight against Germany's Mike Eckhardt by 0.1 points.
Shooting in front of his supporters, the German shooter Maik Eckhardt, 42, was eliminated two shots later, dropping out of the match after shot 12 with 122.7 points.
Another German athlete, Henri Junghaenel, 25, took the fifth place. Junghaenel has been one of the most consistent prone shooters, this year. The young athlete, who's currently living in USA and studying at the Kentucky University, won the first ISSF World Cup Stage of the year in Changwon, Korea, and then made it to the final at the second world cup stage in Fort Benning, USA, where he placed in sixth. The home shooter closed today's final with 144.0 points.