Australia's shooters have taken their overall Tokyo 2020 quota to 15 after a dominant display at the Oceania Championships last week, where they claimed 11 spots.
It was a memorable event for the Aussies, with Victorians Mitchell Iles and Sergei Evglevski both winning gold medals and achieving Tokyo Olympic Games quota positions on the last day of the Oceania Championship.
The two quota positions will see Australia occupy 15 places across all disciplines at next year’s Tokyo Games.
Iles, a 2016 Rio Olympian, captured the gold medal and an Oceania Junior Record in the Men’s Trap shooting 43 of 50 targets to defeat teammate Daniel Di Pietro (39 targets) with New Zealand’s Owen Bennett (29 targets) winning the silver and bronze medals.
The biggest shock of the event was the early elimination of Australia’s 2004 Athens Olympic Games bronze medallist, Adam Vella.
Vella entered the final as the highest-ranked shooter after the morning qualification round but was the first of six shooters to be eliminated.
In the Men’s 25m Rapid Fire Pistol, Evglevski (30 points) was largely untroubled when winning gold with ACT’s Thomas Ashmore (22 points) and New Zealand’s Thomas Noble (15 points) winning the silver and bronze medals respectively.
Evglevski, 22, a silver medallist in the event at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, said he is now focused on the final Olympic selection trials in the New Year.
The Championship ended on a high note for New Zealand with Natalie Rooney (37 targets) winning gold in the Women’s Trap when she defeated the Australian pair of Lisa Smith (33) and Breanna Collins (26).
Rooney, the Rio 2016 Olympic Games silver medallist behind Australia’s Catherine Skinner, held a one-shot lead going into the final five shots and managed to hit four targets while Smith could only down one.
Earlier in the championships, the brother-sister duo of Rio 2016's Jack Rossiter also earned Tokyo quota spots, with Jack setting a new Oceania Senior Record (451.8) in the 50m Rifle and Tori both winning gold and setting the Junior and Senior Oceania record in the 10m Air Rifle (246.8).
Prior to the Championships, Australian shooters Laetisha Scanlan and Penny Smith had claimed Tokyo Games quota positions in the Women’s Trap.
The full list of Australian shooting quotas are;
- Women's Trap (Laetisha Scanlan and Penny Smith)
- Men's Trap (Mitchell Iles, Sergei Evglevski, James Willet )
- Men's 10m Rifle (Dane Sampson)
- Men’s Skeet (Paul Adams)
- Women’s Skeet (Laura Coles)
- Men’s 3P (Jack Rossiter)
- Women’s 3P (Emma Adams)
- Women’s 10m Air (Dina Aspandiyarova)
- Men’s 10m Air (Bailey Groves)
- Women’s 25m Pistol (Elena Galiabovitch)
- Men’s 10m Rifle (Alex Hoberg)
- Women’s 10m Rifle (Tori Rossiter)
The Australian Olympic shooting team will be announced in March.
