Rifle world records tumble on day three of Alicante 2013

Great Britain win their first gold and Swede Jonas Jacobsson sets the world record he has waited 13 years for at the 2013 IPC Shooting European Championships. 23 Oct 2013

17-time Paralympic champion Swede Jonas Jacobsson may face tough competition from Israel's Shaziri Doron in the R7 (men's 50m rifle three positions SH1).

ⒸIPC

By IPC

"I've been chasing to get over 1170 for a long time and to be honest, that was one of the reasons I carried on after Sydney."

Two qualification world records in R7 (men's 50m rifle three positions SH1) and R4 (mixed 10m air rifle standing SH2) have been broken on day three of the 2013 IPC Shooting European Championships.

Swedish 22-time European champion Jonas Jacobsson broke the R7 qualification world record with a 1172 and, after converting that into a finals win to add another gold to his collection, revealed that the record was a long fought achievement:

"This was a good one.

"I've been chasing to get over 1170 for a long time and to be honest, that was one of the reasons I carried on after Sydney.

"It took me another 13 years", the smiling 48 year-old said.

Jacobsson dominated throughout the finals match (468.9), beating closest rival and silver medallist Israeli Shaziri Doron by a margin of 11.1 points and Josef Neumaier who picks up another medal for Germany.

The next world record came in qualification for the R4, with recently turned 40 year-old New Zealander Michael Johnson celebrating his birthday in style with a record mark of 634.0, which will also be chalked as a new Oceania record.

In a highly competitive final which saw two shoot-offs for elimination between Australian Jason Maroney and Brit Richard Davies, team mate Ryan Cockbill and Ukrainian Vladyslav Biletskiy, Johnson could not quite repeat the performance and finished the match in championship silver medal position. Gold went to Ukrainian Vasyl Kovalchuk with Great Britain's James Bevis collecting European silver*. Slovenian Gorazd Francek Tirsek completes the podium for bronze.

"It is really great and my first big victory since the Paralympics in London. It is really great to be European champion and it is the first time I have got such a good result in R4", Kovalchuk said.

Great Britain won a long awaited gold in the R4 team rankings, with top scorer Richard Davies, Ryan Cockbill and Adam Fontain scoring an impressive 1877.5. Serbia continue their good form with another silver to add to their growing collection and Ukraine win bronze.

Determined not to be outdone by the rifle shooters, Serbian shooter Rastko Jokic set a new P4 (mixed 50m pistol SH1) European finals record of 181.4 to win gold. Slawomir Okoniewski wins Poland's first medal of the championships in silver and Russian London 2012 silver medallist Valery Ponomarenko collects bronze.

Finally, 37 year-old Sergey Malyshev triumphed in the P5 (mixed 10m air pistol standard SH1) with a score of 364 with team mate Obvintsev in silver, adding two more medals on what was a very good day at the range for Russia. Sweden's Joackim Norberg finished in bronze.

Competitions at the 2013 IPC Shooting European Championships run until 25 October and will feature over 170 athletes from more than 30 countries.

Updates will be posted to Twitter: @IPCShooting and Facebook/com/IPCShooting.

*Under IPC rules, a region cannot hold their own recognised regional championships unless there are more than four nations with athletes entering. As Oceania have two nations which enter athletes - Australia and New Zealand - they cannot hold their own recognised championships. Therefore athletes from these countries are invited to attend another regional championships. In the case of the 2013 IPC Shooting European Championships, athletes from these countries which medal in any event are registered as `competition medallists'. Athletes from Europe are awarded the title of `European medallists'. Should an athlete(s) from Oceania finish in the top three, the next placed European(s) is awarded the relevant medal(s) in conjunction with the Oceania athlete.