Despite the absence of medals at this year’s Grand Prix of Plsen, some of the British, English and Scottish team members did return with good results to their names.

Siân Corish, last year’s gold medallist in the Junior Women Air Rifle and now in her first year as a senior, produced 394 in the Friday match.  Although this left her 19th of the 45 competitors, such is the compression of scores around this area that she was only two points away from the final.

The Junior Women Air Rifle had an even larger field and exhibited the same problem.  Melanie Flowers and Sheree Cox both scored 391 on Friday to finish 17th and 18th respectively.  If either had shot a 99 with their final series instead of 98, they could have qualified for the final eight.  The following day they improved, but so did the overall standard.  Sheree moved up to a score of 392 and 14th place.  Melanie did even better to be top of the 393s and claim the last place in the final, but was unfortunately not able to overtake any of the other finalists.

There are no team events at Plsen, and anyway Siân was in a different competition to Mel and Sheree.  Nevertheless it’s good to see that their combined scores, 1176 on Friday and 1177 of Saturday, were higher than the existing British Records for Juniors and Seniors.  Maybe we shall see new marks in one or both of these categories later in the year.

Of the Women pistol shooters it was Georgina Geikie who shone on both days - 382 and 380 put her in 10th and 11th places respectively, counted out of the final on Friday and one point adrift on Saturday.  In the Juniors, Catriona McGregor of Scotland is reported to have produced a Personal Best of 367; one can hardly ask a young shooter of limited international experience to do more.

Amongst the men, the best results came from the Air Rifle Juniors. James Huckle scored 584 and finished 13th on both days.  Ken Parr had the edge on James and on Friday his 585 was one point short of the final.  On Saturday 588 got him into the final in 4th place and he got off to a good start.  He moved up to third place with his first shot and consolidated the position with the next two, including a 10.8. The next few shots included some high nines and although Ken was able to hold on to third place, the shooters in the middle places were starting to bunch up.  The crunch came on the eighth shot where it had become so tight that his 9.7 dropped him from third to sixth, which turned out to be his finishing position. Nevertheless good experience, particularly as Ken, James, Georgina, Mel and Sheree are all in the team for the Munich Match on 24 to 26 January, when hopefully they will be able to build on their Plsen performances.