Amazing shooters at ISSF Munich and Maribor World Cups

I'm all finished shooting for the Munich and Maribor stages of the 2014 ISSF World Cup Series. I'll be going to Beijing in about 9 days to shoot at the final stage of the series. I would have liked to have finished higher in both locations but there are some clear areas I need to focus on in my training to improve. My timing is still off and I'm taking too long between shots. This longer time leads to over-thinking which, in a sport that is very mental focused, you just can't do.

It's amazing to watch the top 8 finalists across various disciplines shoot in the ISSF World Cup finals. This is where the top 8 people out of the 100 or so trying to qualify start at 0 points and shoot until a champion is determined. I definitely pick up a lot just watching the top people compete in their disciplines.

Women's 50m 3 positions Final

I was able to do a bit of sightseeing in Germany, Italy, Austria, and Slovenia and have posted photos on various websites:

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Arrived in Munich for 2014 ISSF World Cup!

I flew out of Vancouver on June 3rd and flew to Toronto to catch up with teammates Connor Deneka and Ben Taylor who I would be travelling with the next 3 weeks. It was great to see them at our next gate and unfortunately our teammate Audrey-Anne Dery got delayed flying out of Quebec City and couldn't make our Toronto-to-Munich flight so we caught up with her the morning of June 5th.

Once arriving in Munich we got our luggage and gun cases and headed through customs and then caught up with our ISSF host who directed us to our shuttle bus. One of the best parts of attending these ISSF World Cup events is seeing all the various teams from countries from all over the place who have flown in to compete here. There are close to 1300 athletes from 96 nations competing here!

First stop after arriving in Munich is to the range to drop off our rifles and pistols at the armoury for storage during our time in Munich. It was at this point that we hit the second hiccup on our trip... after leaving our backpacks in the shuttle bus, thinking we would be quick to go in and pick up our accreditation and drop off our guns, the bus left without us to the host hotels. Noooo! Thanks to the helpful staff at the ISSF they were able to track down our things and bring them to our hotel the next day.

Competitor #1238!

After catching up with Audrey-Anne we headed to Marienplatz, the city's main central square since 1158! It's amazing to see the old and new buildings around this part of the city. The Glockenspiel at Marianplatz is cool to see.. I'm always amazed by things with lots of moving parts and I imagine the maintenance must be constant.

After taking in some sights it was back to business and one of the first things on my schedule was going through the open training time. During open training each country has reserved lanes for them to practice, and me being the only one from Canada representing 10m, I had the lane to myself. 20 shots in and I was very happy with my results. Awesome.

Next was getting the best H&N Finale Match pellets to use. This involves putting the airgun in a vice and shooting at targets with various tins of pellets from their manufacturing line. It turned out that Lot #40181 gave the best results so I picked up 20 tins (10,000 pellets) which will be enough to cover me for the rest of the competitions I'll be at this year. Back in Vancouver when I'm training, I'm less concerned about the best batch to use and just focus on training so I use the same brand but they're not tested. When shooting for a competition score at the international level, I want the best grouping I can get though so I keep these tested ones reserved for competitions.

Results from my H&N pellet testing plus some extras that H&N included.
Thanks H&N Sport!

I go through pre-event training on Tuesday and then shoot for score on Wednesday. You can see realtime scoring of all events on the ISSF Munich World Cup site and follow me on twitter at @alharding for more updates!

1 week until Munich stage of 2014 ISSF World Cup Series

One more week until I travel to Europe for the Munich and Maribor stages of the 2014 ISSF World Cup Series! I'll be flying to Toronto June 3rd and catching up with teammates Audrey-Anne Dery, Ben Taylor, and Connor Deneka, before flying to Munich. This will be my second time shooting at the Olympia-Schießanlage range - one of the best ranges I've been to!

On June 12th we'll make the drive to Maribor, Slovenia for the World Cup stage there and then returning home about a week later. Busy busy!

Training has been going great lately with the new SIUS electronic scoring system I now have setup. It makes it great being able to shoot with the same electronic scoring system used at the World Cup and other international events.

New SIUS electronic scoring on the left replaces my
paper hand crank target system

I want to give special thanks to BC Target Sports for some funding earlier this year. That money went directly to helping purchase my flight for this Munich & Maribor trip. Thank you! Also would like to send a thank you out to Roy and Jeff at SIUS and Harvey at AGP! Thanks guys!

Looking forward to 2014

It's been awhile since I've posted an update here and I figured with 2014 off to a great start, I better get some news on here. If all goes to plan I'll have a busy year of travelling to various shooting competitions all over the place. Awesome!

First up... some events in Canada:

• Feb 14-16: 2014 Canadian Airgun Grand Prix - Toronto, ON
• Mar 7-9: BC Airgun Championships - Richmond, BC
• Mar 14-16: City of Calgary Airgun Championships - Calgary, AB

Then as a member of the National Development Team representing Canada on the 2014 ISSF World Cup Tour. The first stop will be held on March 26-April 3 at Fort Benning, USA - more information can be found on the ISSF website calendar.

The ranges they have at Fort Benning for ISSF competitions are excellent, definitely some of the best I've been to in North America. I've competed there twice in the past already (2011 USA Fall Selection & 2013 USA Nationals) so that will be an advantage going into that competition.

After that ISSF World Cup, I've got limited travel planned until June when I'm hoping to get to the back to back World Cup events happening in Munich and Maribor. Not many details are up online for those two events yet though.

Next post will have details on the three 'local' shooting clubs I train at!

For more frequent (and often tech or sports related) updates follow me on Twitter at @alharding.

Competing at Milan and Munich World Cups

I'm at Munich airport waiting for my flight to Frankfurt and figured I would use this time to get a blog post submitted. Competing at World Cups is a different experience than competing back home at Provincial and National competitions. Now that I've attended 2 back to back World Cup events I'm coming home with experience and knowledge about what it takes to compete at this level.

It's amazing to watch some of the top shooters who shoot 10 after 10 after 10 after 10 etc etc in an almost machine-like precision. It's awesome.

Panoramic taken from my phone showing the 100 position 10m range in Munich
Click for full size version

For the 50m event I did better in Munich than I did the week before in Milan. I know I'll improve more too once I make some modifications to the gun's grip. I found 2 trouble spots on the grip, which after raising and re-raising my arm may times during the match, caused some pain. I was hoping to get my grip worked on in Munich by one of the vendors but they booked up their appointments quickly.

In the 10m event, I shot better in Milan than I did in Munich. I started out strong but towards the end of the event I was having trouble with the trigger on my Steyr which resulted in a lower score than I would have liked.

Mentally, I know there are some things I'll need to work on. I could have spent more time preparing for what it would be like shooting next to guys who shoot extremely well. As well as just the overall experience and the kind of scores that would be shot. I knew they would be high, but it's different when you watch someone shoot at and near World Record levels.

All in all, it was a great trip and experience and I'm super happy and grateful I was able to attend and be part of Team Canada. Those were the last two stops on the ISSF World circuit until 2013... now I gotta get back to Vancouver, back to the range, make some modifications to my Pardini and Steyr and shoot more 10s! :)

Arrived in Munich

Arrived in Munich yesterday after travelling up from Milan. Always a bit of a paperwork process flying out of airports with shooting equipment... but we made it!

The Munich shooting range is pretty incredible and it makes me think that Munich is basically the center of the Olympic shooting universe. There are vendors all over the place here to fix equipment and sell you lots of stuff. This morning got through equipment check, with no line-up... awesome!

My gear ready to be checked through Equipment Control

I had my ammo tested by H&N and found that my shot group was too big, so then I took my gun over to the Steyr tent and had it serviced -- which is awesome because I always wondered if there was any 'issues' after it took a fall and hit the ground a few months ago.

After about an hour I took the gun back to the H&N tent and they re-tested it and everything was working sooooo much better. Makes me wish that this was available at the Milan World Cup last week because maybe some of those 9.9's would have been 10's. ;)

The main problem here is the number of athletes and the lack of shuttle buses to and from the range to the various athlete hotels around Munich.

Time to find some local food!