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Over 300 competitors gathered this past weekend at the new shooting range in Oparany, near the city of Tabor in Czech. They were there for the 2003 Czech Open Nationals. Of course, part of the attraction was to come and see this range, which will host the 2004 European Championships next year. There is an advantage in knowing the range where you will compete, and so many shooters made the effort to be there. You can read about the Oparany range in this report. IPSC shooting in Czech has come a long way in a very short time. No doubt thanks to the efforts of the organizers and sponsors. Today, Czech has top shooters in all divisions - and they seem to be getting better and better every year. This would not be an easy one to win?.I traveled to the match via Munich, where I was schedule to give a one day course at the SSK range. It was a good day, but meant that I arrived at the Czech match later than I would have liked, and was not able to get a look at the range the day before the shoot began. So you can bet I was there on the range early the next morning. The stage designs were excellent offering a wide range of challenges, with a good balance of speed and accuracy, and some really nice props thrown in as well. All in all, I would have to say this was one of the best matches I've seen. Of course, there are always some little problems. Not all the squads were of equal size, and we spend the first day stuck behind a huge squad of 20 or so, waiting for them to finish each stage before we could shoot. On the second day things were better, as that squad was made smaller.The fantastic Spanish shooter, Eduardo DeCobos is back in action after two years away from the sport, and it was a real pleasure and a challenge to compete with him again. He certainly has some of the best moving abilities I have ever seen. So fast. Luckily for the rest of us, he has not yet found the consistency to win matches. He will be one to watch for sure. I shot well, but not error free. Day one was very solid, but on day two I felt like I could do nothing right. Although I was shooting well, each stage seemed to have some little glitch pventing me from scoring well. It is said that when you shoot well, it seems easy, and when your shooting is off, you work hard. Well, day two was one of the hardest days of shooting I can remember. On day three we shot only 4 last stages, and I was able to shoot those well. At least the big ones, that tend to count more... The top 10 end results were: 1 100.00 1823.5941 336 Saul Kirsch 2 96.67 1762.8519 378 Eduardo DeCobos 3 95.51 1741.6795 205 Martin Kamenicek 4 91.29 1664.7588 16 Stephan Quertinier FRA 5 90.12 1643.4080 53 Manfred Segessenmann SUI 6 89.58 1633.6200 109 Miroslav Havlicek 7 86.45 1576.5560 221 Jakub Adamek 8 83.42 1521.2375 64 Nils Nothnagel GER 9 82.75 1509.0669 38 Florian Marchal FRA
10 82.68 1507.6685 28 Patrik Schneider SUI As always, I have my sponsors to thank for their support:
Drummen Custom Guns
Nobel Sport
Arredondo accessories
Rescomp Handgun Technologies
Aimpoint
BUL Transmark
Competitive Edge Dynamics (CED)
Mpro-7 My next major match will be the Rooster Mountain in Denmark. But that is still a few weeks off, so I have time for some qualitypractice. I wish you all great shooting. Saul kirsch Movies from the Czech Open Stage 7 Stage 15 Stage 22 Stage 24 |
