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The young shooter beats star Di Spigno and leads
Italian 1-2-3

Raajiv Tripathi
DOHA
Young Andrea Vescovi has been coming to Doha for three years but the 2014 world junior champion savoured his biggest moments on Monday when he beat a star-studded field to win the Men's Double Trap gold medal at the Losail Ranges on Monday.
His victory by four targets underlined how Vescovi dominated the event and defeated four-time world champion and his training partner Daniele Di Spigno 75-71 despite windy conditions. With the triumph, Vescovi earned $7,000 for his effort and led an Italian 1-2-3 as well.
Vescovi, who was tied with world silver medallist Indian Ankur Mittal after the qualifying rounds and needed a shootoff to get the fifth place in the six-man eliminations, commented:"I'm delighted with my win. This is the first time that I entered the medal round here in three years and I'm pleased with the gold medal.
"It was a tough match at the end as I had to fight with Italian star Di Spigno. We spend a lot of time together training back home. Sometimes he wins and sometime I win. Today was really my day," said Vescovi with a smile.
"Besides the gold medal, I'm also happy with the high scores that I got in the finals, though the conditions were not friendly at all," he added.
The qualification rounds were led by 2012 London Olympics bronze medallist and five times World Cup winner Vasily Mosin from Russia with a high score of 143. Ignazi Tronca and Marco Innocenti, both from Italy, were tied at 134, while Mittal and Vescovi were locked at 133.
Vescovi outshot the Indian, the 2017 world championship silver medallist and Asia champion, to get the fifth place and then he kept improving in the finals. The first to bow out was Mittal, who got 24 out of 15 double shots. Then the Russian world champion, who has won here in 2015, left the range, getting only 30.
Then only the Italians were left in the contention for the top three places. The Rio Olympics silver medallist and double world champion Innocenti, the 2016 winner in Losail, went out at the next stage with 41. Vescovi advanced with 47, while Di Spigno, who has won twice here and finished runner-up as many times, had 46 and Tronca, the 2015 European championship silver medallist, shot 43.
With the consistency showed by Vescovi and Di Spigno, it was clear that the next shooter to exit would be Tronca. He could add only nine and bowed out, leaving Vescovi and Di Spigno to battle it out for the gold.
After the first five shots, Vescovi managed to open a three-target gap and in the final five, Di Spigno suffered another hit and miss and had to be satisfied with 71 and the silver medal. Vescovi collected 75 and was a deserving champion.
Di Spigno said,"It was the first competition of the year and very tough one. It was important because the Double Trap is going to be deleted by the ISSF (from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics). Many countries like Italy, Russia, India, Qatar, Kuwait, Morocco, Great Britain and Australia were represented in this competition. Imagine that somebody came from a distant Australia just to contest in the Double Trap. So you know how popular this event is.
"We are at the beginning of the season but we showed that we are already ready for the next stage. In Italy, we are all friends and there is always a good competition when we train together. We train together two times a week. I am very happy that he won today. He is a good shooter and will do well in future," Di Spigno, who won the world title last year with a world record score of 78 out of 80, added.
Qatari shooters could not do as good as was expected of them. There were four of them and the best was Abdulbaset Mohsin at 13th with 127. Hamad al Marri, who had beaten Innocenti for the second place last year, finished in 16th, while Masoud Ali al Adba had 123 for the 17th place and Rashid Ali al Athbi hit 121 to get the 19th spot.
Results
Men's Double Trap
Men’s Double Trap
1.Andrea Vescovi, ITA (26 28 27 26 26) 133+2 (Qua) & 75
2.Daniele Di Spigno, ITA (26 27 28 27 28) 136 & 71
3.Ignazio Tronca, ITA (28 27 27 25 27) 134+2 & 52
4.Marco Innocenti, ITA (25 25 28 30 26) 134+1 & 41
5.Vasily Mosin, RUS (29 28 28 28 30) 143 & 30
6.Ankur Mittal, IND (28 26 28 25 26) 133+1 & 24
13.Abdulbaset Mohsin, QAT (30 23 22 27 25) 127
16.Hamad al Marri, QAT (25 28 26 26 22) 127
17.Masoud Ali al Adba, QAT (30 22 23 23 25) 123
19.Rashid Ali al Athbi, QAT (24 25 27 21 24) 121
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20/02/2018
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