322 best European athletes from 48 nations are taking part in the 2nd European Games in Minsk, Belarus. They are competing for the right to ascend the podium and for 12 Quota Places for Tokyo-2020 – one in each individual Olympic event.
The first winners of the competitions were determined on Saturday in 10m Air Pistol and 10m Air Rifle Mixed Team events. In the first event the gold medals went to Vitalina Batsarashkina and Artem Chernousov from Russia. In the Gold Medal match they were more precise than Zorana Arunovic and Damir Mikec from Serbia. In the Bronze Medal match Sandra and Christian Reitz from Germany were better than Viktoria Chaika and Abdul Aziz Kurdzi from Belarus.
Two teams from Russia were competing against each other in Gold Medal match of the 10m Air Rifle. Yulia Karimova and Sergey Kamenskiy won the gold while Anastasia Galashina and Vladimir Maslennikov – the silver medals. The bronze went to Aneta Brabcova and Filip Nepejchal from the Czech Republic.
There were 4 Finals on Sunday. Artem Chernousov won the 10m Air Pistol Men. The runner-up was the Ukrainian Oleh Omelchuk. Besides the silver medal he obtained the only Olympic Quota in this event because Chernousov had it already from the 2018 World Championship in Changwon. The bronze medal went to Lauris Strautmanis from Latvia.
Zorana Arunovic, silver medalist in the Mixed Team event, won the gold in individual 10m Air Pistol Women. The runner-up here was Anna Korakaki, 2016 Olympic Champion, from Greece. The bronze medal went to Antonetta Boneva from Bulgaria and the Quota place for Tokyo-2020 – to Klaudia Bres from Poland who finished on the sixth position but was lucky enough that other finalist had won Quotas before.
Two Italians – Silvana Stanco and Jessica Rossi – won respectively gold and silver in Trap Women. The bronze medal and the Quota Place went to Fatima Galvez from Spain.
In Trap Men the gold medal and the Olympic quota obtained the winner – David Kostelecki from the Czech Republic. Valerio Grazini from Italy was second and Aaron Heading from Great Britain – third.
More information and the results can be found on the website of the European Shooting Confederation (www.esc-shooting.org) and of the Organizing Committee of the 2nd European Games (www.minsk2019.by).
