Women's Skeet Claims Six Medals at World Championship;Craft Secures Olympic Team Nomination
Women's Skeet athletes from the U.S. will be bringing back a lot of hardware from the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) Shotgun World Championship as Morgan Craft (pictured) and Caitlin Connor went gold/silver respectively in the Open division and Sydney Carson and Dania Vizzi took silver/bronze in the Junior division today in Lonato, Italy.
The competition in the Open division couldn't have been more intense as the gold-medal match turned into an American faceoff for not only for a gold medal, but also a nomination to the 2016 Olympic Team via the USA Shooting points system.
Craft (Muncy Valley, Pennsylvania) and Connor (Winnfield, Louisiana) fought their way to the gold-medal match through a three-way shootoff with eventual bronze medalist Ning Wei of China. Once in the gold-medal match, Craft and Connor were tied right up until the second-to-last pair of targets. On the final pair, Connor missed both targets, leaving the door open for Craft who would hit both to take the gold medal, 15 – 13. The win also secured Craft the nomination to the Team for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
"Eight years ago I never thought I would be at this spot," Craft said. "This is what I worked for, what I believed I can do for the last couple of years. I'm exactly where I want to be now - I just achieved my lifetime goal…I love Caitlin and I'm so happy that we got gold and silver, I couldn't be happier to share the podium with my teammate."
Craft, Connor and Rhode also claimed the team gold medal when they equaled the world record of 215 targets.
Connor, along with Kim Rhode (El Monte, California) who finished in 16th place, as well as other Olympic Team hopefuls, will compete for the second Women's Skeet team nomination in the two-part Olympic Trials process which begins in October at the Fall Selection Match in Tucson, Arizona.
The drama continued into the Junior Women's Skeet Final as all three U. S. athletes – Sydney Carson, Dania Vizzi and Katharina Jacob – had qualified to move on.
- See more at: http://www.shootingwire.com/story/356496#sthash.Ka735fpC.dpuf
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