It has been a successful few weeks for Victorian Institute of Sport athletes at the World Shooting Championships in Korea, with Nathan Argiro winning gold in the Junior Men’s Trap as well as combining with fellow scholarship holder, Mitchell Illes-Crevtain, to win gold in the Junior Men’s Teams Trap event.
Despite missing three of his last five targets, the young VIS scholarship holder finished in gold position in the Trap Men Juniors, beating USA’s Logan Joseph Lucas and Italian Lorenzo Ferrari.
Argiro, whose previous highest Junior World Cup finish was 5th, proved too strong for his competitors leading the event from the start to end with a perfect third round of 10 targets hit out of 10 shots.
Going into the final five shots with a four-hit lead, the gold medal looked all but his. However, he missed three of his final four targets securing the medal with his final shot of the day and finishing with 42 total hits out of 50 targets to take the gold.
Argiro wasn’t finished there, teaming up with VIS’ Mitchell Illes and Adam Blysma to win gold in the Junior Men’s Trap finaland writing his way into the history books by becoming a dual Junior World Champion.
In other exciting VIS shooting news, both Laetisha Scanlan and James Willet earned Australia an Olympic Quota spot for Tokyo 2020, both finishing fourth in their respective events.
As the recent Commonwealth Games Champion, Scanlan qualified into the final of the Women’s Trap but missed a few early shots that kept her off the podium, missing the medals by six targets.
Willet also got close to a podium finish in the Men’s Trap, however, a couple of early target misses cost him dearly, finishing in fourth by four hits.
The ISSF World Championships continues this week in Changwon, Korea and will conclude on Saturday 15 September.
