Credit: Donald McIntosh
Seonaid McIntosh was crowned the winner in women’s 50m rifle prone at the ISSF World Championships in Changwon, Korea.
The 22-year-old Scot finished on top of the leaderboard after an incredibly close-fought competition on 5 September.
As women’s prone is not an Olympic discipline, there is no final in this event – so it was a straight 60-shot fight for the top spot.
In the end, no fewer than four athletes were in contention going into the final 10-shot detail. As well as McIntosh, there was Slovakia’s Daniela Peskova, Germany’s Isabella Straub and another German, Jacqueline Orth.
It was Peskova who held the lead after 50 shots, and appeared to be in a commanding position – but she couldn’t hold her nerve in the final detail.
Meanwhile, McIntosh and Straub had matched each other almost shot for shot – they achieved exactly the same score in each of the first three details – and Straub was now 0.2 ahead of McIntosh. In fourth place, Orth was just 0.2 behind.
Orth shot a strong 103.9 in the last 10 shots but it wasn’t enough to propel her out of fourth place. Peskova dropped back to third with 101.5. Between Straub and McIntosh, the competition wasn’t decided until the very last shot.
Nine shots in, Straub had the lead by 0.5. Her final shot was a 10.2 – good but not unbeatable. McIntosh stepped up and shot a perfect 10.9 to take gold by the slimmest of margins.
Great Britain took another medal in the team version of the same event, as the two McIntosh sisters plus Zoe Bruce won bronze, behind Germany and Denmark.
As Target Sports went to print, these were the only medals Great Britain had won at the World Championships.
Leave a Reply