Day 3 of the ISSF World Cup Final at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range in New Delhi (IND) close with an outstanding duel to decide the winner of the men’s Skeet title.
At the end of the match, it was Italy’s Riccardo Filippelli who raised the trophy, as he prevailed over Great Britain’s 23-year-old Ben Llewellin after a tie-breaking shoot-off made necessary by their unbelievable shooting: both the Italian and the British, in fact, crushed 59 out of 60 targets, co-signing the new Skeet Men World Record.
In took only four more clays, however, to see Llewellin miss his second target of the match, a costly mistake that Filippelli quickly exploited, winning the first ISSF crystal globe of his career and leaving Llewellin in 2nd place.
“I love this range, it’s very beautiful and you can see the targets quite clearly,” said Filippelli, who took Gold at this year’s World Cup stage in New Delhi, where he set the previous World Record with 57 hits. “Then, of course, I was in great shape, I beat my own record and I’m taking this huge trophy home with me!”
“Being a World Cup Final, those were supposed to be the 12 best shooters in the world,” added the 37-year-old. “So the high-level of the match didn’t surprise me. There was only one thing I could do: not miss my second target.”
“Now I will take a couple of months off, I want to rest a while and spend some time with my friends and my girlfriend,” he concluded.
First-time World Cup Final participant Federico Gil (29) of Argentina completed the podium in 3rd place, adding another achievement to the first World Cup Gold of his career, won in Larnaka (CYP) last May. Gil, number 7 in the World Ranking, only missed one of his 50 targets, taking Bronze because of a lower bib number compared to Filippelli and Llewellin.
Despite hitting all of his first 30 clays, United States’ 29-year-old Frank Thompson missed the podium, as he only crushed 7 of the following 10 and concluded with 37 out of 40, taking 4th position on the table. The American was followed by the current Olympic and World Champion Gabriele Rossetti, who missed a single target in each of his first two stations and concluded in 5th place with 28 target hits out of 30.
The first shooter eliminated from the match was Cyprus’ Georgios Achilleos (36), who crushed only 13 of his first 20 targets and took 6th place.
Medal standings after 9 out of 18 events
| Rank | Nation | Individual | Team | Total | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gold | Silver | Bronze | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total | ||
| 1 | ITA |
1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 2 | CHN |
1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 6 | ||
| 3 | FRA |
1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||||
| 3 | SRB |
1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||||
| 5 | USA |
1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 6 | HUN |
1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||||
| 7 | ESP |
1 | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| 7 | IND |
1 | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| 7 | JPN |
1 | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| 10 | UKR |
1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||||
| 11 | BLR |
1 | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| 11 | GBR |
1 | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| 11 | ROU |
1 | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| 14 | ARG |
1 | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| 6 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 27 | ||
The ISSF World Cup Final in New Delhi (IND) will continue tomorrow with four more finals: the 50m Rifle Prone Men, scheduled at 11:00 am (UTC+5:30); the 25m Pistol Women, scheduled at 12:30 pm; the 50m Pistol Men, scheduled at 2:00 pm; and the Double Trap Men, scheduled at 4:30 pm.
All finals will be streamed live on the ISSF website, on the Federation’s Livestream channel, on its official Facebook page and on the Olympic Channel.
Live results of the competition, news and updates will be available on www.issf-sports.org and on all ISSF social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Weibo and Youku.