For the past few years I'd been hearing about the European Steel challenge, held in Austria, near the Italian border. The steel shooters consider this match to be the top event of the year, and indeed it has become an international gathering of the best steel shooters in Europe. I knew I had to give it a shot. This year, I have been trying to diversify my shooting activities a little. I shot the Dutch Bianchi - learning that an IPSC gun goes not quite cut it in that game. And I wanted to try to shoot the steel challenge too. A chance to meet a new bunch of shooters as well, as many of them do not shoot IPSC regularly, and in fact do not think too highly of IPSC shooting. I must have heard from 10 people there that "IPSC shooters cannot shoot accurately enough to do really well in the Steel challenge". I decided I wanted to win this one! For those of you not familiar with the steel challenge - it's rather simple: you shoot 6 stages, 5 times each, hot range for all 5 runs. Your best 4 times score, and the worst one gets tossed (YES!!). Each stage requires a minimum of 5 shots, as there are 5 plates to hit. You need to finish on specific plate panted red. You don't knock them down - just "ping" them, and the RO calls a miss if need be. For a miss you loose 5 seconds. But since they paint the steel for each shooter, there are never more than 5 hits on a plate, so scoring is easy and there are few arguments. Add up the times for all the stages - and you have your winner - he who show the least amount of time in total - wins. Simply - but no so simple to shoot well... The plates vary in size and distance, from about 8m to 32m, and in size from small round plates of 12cm or so, to big 40x60cm squares. The stages are precisely the same every match, so knowing them and being able to practice them is a real advantage. To do well in this match, you want to shoot very controlled and not have too many extra shots. In fact, you have to have almost none to do well. I shot a little too fast to begin with, but was improving as I shot. I guess I was fast enough to beat the others, even with more extra shots in total than I care to confess to... I won the match, setting a new record for the range of 66.82 seconds. Considering it was a 10 hour drive each way - maybe I should have shot for longer...:) Open Pistol results:
1 86 Kirsch Saul, ISR 66,82
2 29 Borg ter Jan, NL 70,50
3 143 Tigges Jens, D 72,42
4 163 Weber Günter, 72,51
5 16 Bettermann Heribert 73,16
6 186 Siemeling Mario, NL 74,12
7 25 Borg ter Harry, NL 80,68
8 101 Motsch Mirko, D 82,03
9 168 Wigger Hans, NL 83,75
10 2 Achterkamp Douwe, 84,12 As always, I have my sponsors to thank for their support:
Competitive Edge Dynamics (CED)
Mpro-7
Drummen Custom Guns
Nobel Sport
Arredondo accessories
Rescomp Handgun Technologies
Aimpoint
BUL Transmark
If you ever want to try a truly mental challenge in your shooting - try the Steel Challenge. Few things that look so easy can so difficult. I am big believer in accuracy training for IPSC shooting, so I think this type of practice is great for that sport too. I enjoyed it totally - and plan to be back again next year DvC
Saul Kirsch |
