Last year I made the long trip to Austria, to shoot and win the European Steel Challenge. It was a great experience, and a thrill to win this title. This year, with such a busy match schedule I was wondering if I should make the long trip again.

After much consideration I decided to go. And I must say that while driving alone, in the rain and heavy traffic for 13 hours - I almost turned around. Luckily I didn't - it was again a fantastic match, and well worth the considerable effort to get there and back by car.

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 has the least amount of time in total - wins. Simple - 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. This year I did not do much specific practice on small plates, and came to shoot in my regular IPSC mode and pace. This naturally led to a good many extra shots - and as I was shooting I had the felling that there is no way I could match my score from last year. After all - I was shooting way more extra shots...

But when the shooting was done, and I totaled my times - I was amazed to see that I had improved my score and course record from last year by over 2 seconds! I guess I shot that much faster, and made up for the extra shots. If you are going to miss - miss fast  :)

Open Pistol results:

1 158 Kirsch Saul, Israel 8,86 13,07 11,26 12,02 5,74 13,85 64,80
2 44 Borg ter Jan, NL E&L DFT 1 10,17 12,79 12,09 13,12 5,32 14,97 68,46
3 241 Ploner Peter-Paul, A 10,31 13,29 13,67 13,80 4,53 14,86 70,46
4 170 Kosiol Timo, D SSC Oldendorf 9,53 15,26 12,07 11,97 6,73 16,36 71,92
5 130 Tigges Jens, D Caliber 10,26 15,76 11,49 14,00 5,71 15,81 73,03
6 96 Weber Günter, A 12,18 15,35 12,62 13,08 5,07 15,53 73,83
7 110 Pedersen Frants, DK DSF DSF DK 10,05 14,48 14,22 14,11 10,88 17,12 80,86
8 67 Borg ter Harry, NL E&L DFT 1 11,74 17,22 14,03 14,31 8,20 16,08 81,58
9 161 Reiche Frank, D 14,14 16,41 13,74 16,20 6,26 16,90 83,65
10 72 Buunk Hermann, NL E&L DFT 2 13,22 15,30 15,81 17,09 7,55 17,28 86,25


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

Good shooting to everyone.

DVD

Saul Kirsch

Pictures:

The Double-Alpha Academy booth at the Steel Challenge. Peter Paul does a great job of attracting sponsors for this match, and his prize table is the best in Europe.

The most beautiful back-stop in the world. The range where the match is held is at the base of this huge Austrian mountain. Beautiful!

The well attended prize ceremony. An impressive prize table awaited all shooters.

Top three in Open Pistol: Saul Kirsch, Jan ter Borg and Ploner Peter-Paul - who is the match organizer. He shot great with an open glock. Very impressive.