Hi All,

The beautiful range. Stand du TDL in Cheval Blanc, by the town of Cavallio in the South of France, offers one of the best venues in Europe. Indeed it is one of the largest open ranges available to IPSC shooters. Place enough to build the 28 stages which made up this years competition. Over 450 rounds in total - a lot of shooting by any standard.

And the shooters seem to appreciate the size of the match and the effort that goes into building so many stages. Over 300 competitors from over 15 countries made the trip to Cheval Blanc for this match. Making it a truly international experience. A great chance to catch up with friends from Greece, Spain France and other countries.

No effort was spared by the organizes. While some of the 28 stages were ICF classifier stages, which are not known to be the most fascinating in our sport - others were great. As always stage 1 was a 32 rounds jungle run - and this year the range had been changed so the shooters had to make their way done a new path through the bush. The well built swinging bridge is still there, as the first challenge to over come in the Chavel Blanc jungle run.

Some new massive constructions had been erected for this years match, like the swinging platform the shooters had to shoot from in stage 16, or the excellent field course of stage 24. Particularly interesting to me was stage 25 - which had me doing something I have never done before on an IPSC stage (or anywhere else for that matter): Shoot down through a trap door in the ground at some targets which were very cleverly positioned under the floor boards. The positions of the targets made it necessary to set up just right in the port, and kneel down low to see all the targets. A new experience for most shooters.

The weather in the South of France has been known to be very surprising in May, and one must always come prepared for all kinds of weather when signing up for the Med cup. "Hope for Sun, but come prepared for rain" is good advice. But this year the weather gods were smiling on us, and there was not one drop of rain the entire four days of the match. This was great - but did however cause another problem - dust! And lots of it. When the wind came up, as it often did, everyone was scrambling for their dust covers. I kept my magazines in my range bag the whole time - a practice I am not used to - and which caused me to walk up to shoot half a dozen times with no magazines on my belt.. Oh well, the RO's were patient with me.

For me the match developed into a tactical one. With the Autoscoring system I always use these days, I was able to keep track of the other top shooters in the Super squad, and soon it became a 2 horse race between young Jorge Ballesteros and myself. In fact, if it wasn't for a terrible jam he had earlier on, and some misses, he would have left me far behind. That kid is FAST!  He won many of the stages, and going into the final day - I was shooting to protect my solid lead of 50 points or so. I didn't mind him winning all the stages, as long as he did not take more than a couple of points off me when doing so. So I kept track of things, shot controlled and consistent, and when the dust settled (literally) at the end of the day, I was a head, and had finally won the Med Cup!

The final top 10 results were:

100.00%  Saul Kirsch ISR
98.13%    Ballesteros Jorge ESP
92.37%    Witters Frank BEL
92.18%    Testa Eddi FRA
86.41%    Roorda Richard HOL
84.62%    Loore Frederic TRFA
84.54%    Avonds Alois BEL
83.93%    Ballesteros Descalz ESP
83.43%    Boittiaux Bertrand FRA
82.85%    Rios Samuel ESP

Just to make sure I had enough to do during the match (ha ha), with the help of my friend Eli Huttner we filmed most of the super squad shooters on all the stages. Using 2 camera angles on most stages. We got some great footage - so stay tuned later in the year for a Double-Alpha Academy DVD of this experience. My plan is to edit a 1 hour DVD which will include my tactical analysis of all the stages. More to follow....

As always, I have my sponsors to thank for their support:
Drummen Custom Guns
Berry's Fmg
Competitive Edge Dynamics (CED)
Mpro-7
Arredondo accessories
Rescomp Handgun Technologies
Aimpoint
BUL Transmark

That's it. There are many more matches to come this season, but I don't many of them will be as large or as enjoyable as this one.

Good shooting to everyone.

DVD

Saul Kirsch

Pictures:

Stage 12 offered a special challenge: Not only did you have to shoot from this floating Jet Ski - but you had to jump off it and move to another position to shoot some more targets.

When they build something at the Med Cup they build it to last for years.. This was the massive construction of stage 24, which offered a really good 32 round stage.

The Double-Alpha booth. More products each month. The table always seems too small these days.

Another solid construction of stage 16. Has the shooter shooting from this swinging platform.

This was new! shooting down through a trapdoor. Edi Testa checks out the tough angle on these targets.

Squad 1.