Outdoor Nationals
February 22nd 2023
DAY 3 - Squad 1 today was greeted with a cool southerly breeze, 14 degrees Celsius and 15-20kph winds. There was a quick scramble to find a warm hat as many competitors realized the conditions would not improve.
Ryan Booth and Jim Dann are to be congratulated for beating the conditions and posting good scores of 606.9 and 604.7 respectively. These scores would later turn out to be the best across all competitors.
Squad 2 was A and C Grades and unfortunately the weather got quite a bit worse as the morning rolled on. With steady rain and average wind speeds of 31kph, quite a number of shooters decided to move their mats back to the 51 meter mark to avoid the rain on the front sight. With gusts up to 40kph this was not as effective as they wanted it to be.
The real test was who could avoid the gusts that were capable of pushing shots to the left into the 6 or 7 ring. Making it even harder was a large number of range flags had become stuck or twisted to their flag poles leaving shooters without flags for small portions of the match.
The best way to visualize today’s conditions is noticing only 3 of 39 competitors made it into the 600’s, with Benchrest struggling with a tie for top score of 394.26 by Graeme Smith and Tony Titheridge. I bet some of them regretted their choice to squad on today’s conditions.
Now if everyone reading this could please cross their fingers and toes… tomorrows weather may just improve for us yet.
Click on the links below for Results.
