Marika Salmi of Finland won her first world cup medal ever at today’s Trap Women Final, during the 2018 ISSF World Cup Shotgun in Tucson, Arizona, USA.
The 30-year old shooter, ranked 20th in the world, had only made it to the top-6 final match twice in her career before, at the 2017 ISSF World Championship in Moscow, and at the 2012 ISSF World Cup in London.
Today, the Finnish athlete walked out of the qualifications in 6th place, with 105 hits out of 125 targets. During the final, she scored 41 targets finishing atop of the scoreboard, tied to Spains’ 2015 World Champion Fatima Galvez.
Salmi won the following shoot-off for gold, collecting the brightest medal with a total tally of 41+2 hits, and leaving the silver to Galvez with 41+1 targets.
France’s Melanie Couzy, 28, also won her first world cup medal, today, as she collected the bronze with 31 hits.
On her way to the podium, the French shooter outscored the seconds Finnish finalist Noora Antikainen (4th with 25 hits) and San Marino’s Alessandra Perilli (5th with 21 hits).
Japan’s 4-time Olympian Yuke Nakayama was the first athlete to drop out of the match, as she closed the final in sixth place with 17 hits.
A total of 205 shooters from 39 nations are competing in the sixth and last ISSF World Cup stage of the season at the Tucson Trap and Skeet Club from the 9th to the 19th of July.
After the women’s and men’s Skeet finals, and today’s Trap Women final, two more medal events are scheduled in the next days.
Tomorrow, the men’s Trap final will take place at 3.30 PM (GMT-7). After the first qualification day, Italy’s Erminio Frasca leads the pack with a perfect score of 50 hits out of 50 targets. Poland’s Piots Kowalczyk follows with 49 targets, while Alessandro De Souza Ferreira of Peru and Simone D’Ambrosio of Italy are tied in third and fourth place with 48 hits (click here for the complete results).
The Trap Mixed Team event will then seal the world cup stage on the 18th of July, with the medal match scheduled at 3.00 PM (GMT-7).