Vadovicova collects second gold at Alicante 2013

"I get really good support from the Ministry of Internal Affairs who have a centre where elite athletes are trained. All that is now paying off."

Slovakian Veronika Vadovicova has emerged as another new young star of shooting on day four of the 2013 IPC Shooting European Championships after winning her second gold of the competition - with a finals European record.

Vadovicova began her campaign with a gold on Monday (21 October) in the R2 (women's 10m air rifle standing SH1). Today the 30 year-old took an early lead in the R8 (women's 50m rifle three positions SH1) finals after qualifying strongly, and pulled away to end with the record score of 442.4 and a clear lead of 6.1 points.

The London 2012 R8 bronze medallist joins a host of other young up-and-coming shooters who have this week shown themselves to be European athletes to watch in the near future.

Speaking of her victory, Vadovicova said she was confident going into todays' competition:

"I expected to win this one because it is one of my best events and I have been training and competing a lot, and I have good support.

Looking forward to the 2014 IPC Shooting World Championships in Suhl, Germany, however, Vadovicova said her performance there would be helped by the improvements in training for para-sport shooters in her home country since the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games:

"I get really good support from the Ministry of Internal Affairs who have a centre where elite athletes are trained. All that is now paying off."

The R8 turned out to be one of the most successful events of the competition so far for Great Britain, with Lesley Baldwin collecting her first international medal in silver and Karen Butler in bronze.

Ukrainian Pavlo Volynets set a new world and European finals record of 625.4 in the R9 (mixed 50m rifle prone SH2), only dropping two rounds out of six. Vasyl Kovalchuk joined him on the podium in silver medal position with Dragan Ristic of Serbia in bronze.

The team R9 results saw a series of firsts with Ukraine winning team gold as Volynets, Kovalchuk and Vladyslav Biletskiy set a new world and European team record of 1859.9. Croatia get themselves off the mark with a silver and Italy also, with bronze medals for top team scorer Massimo Dalla Casa, Pamela Novaglio and Diego Gnesini.

In the P1 (men's 10m air pistol SH1) individual event Filip Rodzik won Poland's first gold of the competition with a score of 193.3, just edging team-mate Bawomir Okoniewski with a 10.7 in the final round to take the title. Serbian Rastko Jokic wins his second medal of the competition in bronze adding to Serbia's significant medal haul of the competition.

Russia win the team gold with a score of 1680 with Valery Ponomarenko as the lead shooter, alongside Sergey Malyshev and Andrey Lebedinsky. Turkey win the team silver and Serbia bronze.

The medals table on the penultimate day of competition sees Russia leading with four golds, one silver and two bronze in total, including three team event golds, with Slovakia in second.

Serbia have an incredible nine medals in third place heading into the last day of competition tomorrow (Friday).

The final events could see a gold for the host nation Spain with Juan Antonio Saavedra heading out for a re-match of his London 2012 R6 (mixed 50m rifle prone SH1) clash with Brit Matt Skelhon. On that occasion, Saavedra won silver with Skehon 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