Visually impaired shooting development continues

Poland topped the medals table with two golds at Grand Prix, held as part of the sport’s development project. 26 Feb 2015
Imagen
Women in a shooting range with a man standing behind her

The mixed 10m air rifle standing winner Anna Barwinska of Poland at the IPC Shooting Grand Prix in Stoke Mandeville, Great Britain.

ⒸIPC
By IPC

Ten visually impaired shooting athletes from eight countries competed at a Grand Prix in Stoke Mandeville, Great Britain, recently, as part of the sport’s research and development project for a sport-specific classification system.

The event, supported by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, saw athletes compete in rifle events with specially adapted guns and targets between 29-30 January.

Poland were the dominant force, winning both the mixed 10m standing and prone gold medals.

Anna Barwinska (198.5) just edged Switzerland’s Claudia Kunz (198.2) with two 10.5’s in the last two elimination rounds of the standing competition.

Denmark’s Lene Christiansen (178.0) shot several scores of 10.7 to claim third.

Jerzy Zalomski (210.4) won the prone for Poland with, finishing with a flourish in the final round to beat Austria’s Patrick Moor (209.1) into second and Christiansen (185.9) with her second medal in third.

The event was a key milestone in the development pathway for visually impaired shooting, especially for the initiation of the research needed to define a sport-specific visually impaired classification criteria. During the event, athletes participated in tests and interviews with the Classification Research Team (based at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, Great Britain).

The event also featured an exhibit and demonstration of the current progress of the project’s technological developments, including new prototype equipment and rules and regulations from IPC Shooting.

In the next months, research for the classification system will be continued, with the goal that a proposed classification system can be presented to National Paralympic Committees (NPCs) for discussion in late 2015.

The full results from the 2015 VI Shooting International Grand Prix can be found at the IPC Shooting website.