It’s August in Cyprus, and like every year, all of Europe is eager to visit. Thousands of Europeans (and more importantly, millions of Euros) will descend of the beaches, restaurants, and hotels of the paradisaic island nation. But a significant amount of Europeans will instead be heading to the small village of Teresefanou (population: 1300): instead of towels, clothes, and disrespect for the locals, these tourists will be bringing cartridges, bullets, and guns to the Larnaca Olympic Shooting Range for the 2022 European Shotgun Championships. Okay, they will probably be packing clothes as well.
Two spots (at most one per NOC) are up for grabs in four events: the skeet and trap for both genders; Belarusians and Russians are allowed to compete. Qualify one athlete per gender in the skeet and you make the mixed team event. The European Shotgun Confederation has an interesting website, where the last ‘News’ item was published in July and there are no startlists (the document they do provide does ensure that the food at the venue is ‘excellent’ however); the ISSF’s website is a bit better but still no list of competitors. The IOC website has a list of a few ‘stars’ (some Olympic medalists and a couple of French athletes). Fortunately, British Shooting has a list of British hopes.
We will start with the Men’s Trap, where our three athletes are headed off by Matthew Coward Holley, Tokyo 2020 bronze medalist. Nathan Hales, who won bronze in the team event in 2019 and Aaron Heading, who came 23rd in Tokyo but has a decent medal haul at World, European and Commonwealth level completes our team. In the skeet, Michael Gilligan, who has been around the blocks for a while and picked up a couple of Grand Prix medals; Freddie Killander, who came 4th at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, and Ben Llewellin, who won silver at that event are our team. On the women’s side, Lucy Hall makes the step up in the trap after winning Junior Gold last year, joined by Kirsty Hegarty who came 16th in Tokyo and Ellie Seward, who finished 9th in the Gold Coast. In the Skeet, World number 41 Jessica Burgess, Gold Coast 2018 5th-placed finisher Emily Hibbs, and Amber Hill who won silver in that event and also qualified for Tokyo 2020 but had a COVID-related DNS.
In 2020, GB qualified two places in the men’s trap, one in each women’s event, and none in the men’s skeet: there was no mixed skeet event in Tokyo. Coward Holley will be aiming for a top-two finish, and I’m also excited to see how Hill will do. The opening ceremony is on Thursday with Trap qualification on Friday and Saturday, with the finals later on Saturday. On Thursday September 8 the Skeet qualification begins and goes into the next day, which is the day of the finals, September 9. You can watch it on the ISSF’s website, issf-sports.org.
GB Games 