Germany's Nele Wissmer was the leader in the women's skeet yesterday with 74 of the 75 possible targets, but today on the second day she unfortunately had two series with 23 of 25 hits each. That adds up to 120 hits, but she had to compete with three other women for the remaining two places in the play-off (the six best start in the final). The German Olympic team's previous bad luck in the shooting events also befell her: with 5 hits and thus two too few, she ended up in 8th place and had to watch the final from the stands. The American Austen Smith is the first to go into the final with 122 out of 125 hits (after the jump-off), followed by Amber Jo Rutter (Great Britain) and Emmanouela Katzouraki from Greece. Incidentally, no Asian shooter was able to qualify for the final round: the two Chinese women took 10th and 13th place in the preliminary round. Nadine Messerschmidt from Germany, who is apparently still suffering from the effects of a shoulder injury, fought her way to 17th place with 117 hits, with the two Italians Martina Bartolomei and Diana Bacosi finishing directly ahead of her with 117 burst targets.
Today, August 4, 2024 is a date to remember for Beretta: with the 11 medals won (out of the 12 so far) thanks to the hattrick in the women's Skeet, the Gardone-based company breaks the Rio 2016 record (10). An achievement that fills Beretta with pride given that the competition from the other gun manufacturers was fiercer than ever.
Beretta stated: „Today we congratulate the new Skeet queen: Chile's Francisca Crovetto who got the better of Amber Rutter Hill (England) and Austen Smith (United States). Tomorrow six more medals are up for grabs in the mixed team for us“.
But let’s have a recap of women’s Olympic Skeet competition of today: There were two Slovakians in the final, the experienced Dana Bartekova and Vanesa Honkova, but they were eliminated in 6th place and an unfortunate 4th place. Francisca Crovetto Chadid is the world record holder with 125 out of 125 clay targets, and she also showed her skills in the final: the molecular biologist from Chile in the play-off for gold ultimately hit one more target than Amber Jo Rutter from Great Britain, who has already been successful at World Cups and European Championships under her maiden name Amber Hill. Rutter's penultimate shot, judged a miss and decisive for the medals, was certainly worthy of discussion, as the (non-authoritative) TV slow motion showed a clearly splintering piece, but the judges ruled against her. Austen Jewell Smith (USA) took the bronze medal; the student trains together with Conner Prince and Vincent Hancock, who already won silver and gold in the men's skeet yesterday, at Hancock's shooting range in Fort Worth in Texas – with two gold and one silver medal, probably the most successful training group in the world!
2024 Olympic Games: the medallists in the women's skeet event – All podium places were achieved with a Beretta DT11
| Placement: | Medal: | Name: | Nation: |
| Gold | 🥇 | Francisca Crovetto Chadid | Chile |
| Silver | 🥈 | Amber Jo Rutter | Great Britain |
| Bronze | 🥉 | Austen Jewell Smith | USA |
2024 Olympic Games: Germany's Florian Peter secures his place in the final with the 25m rapid fire pistol at the very last moment
A drama in two acts: eleven years ago, German shooter Christian Reitz set the world record in the 25m rapid fire pistol qualification. His 593 out of a possible 600 points remained unattained for a long time, but in May of this year at the World Cup in Munich, his team-mate Florian Peter managed to break the record with the same result. That was exactly two months ago today, and both German pistol shooters had to prove today in Châteauroux that they are also capable of world-class results at the Olympics. After all, Reitz is the 2016 Olympic champion in Rio and won bronze in Beijing in 2008, as well as fifth place in Tokyo 2021. Florian Peter won the 2023 World Cup final in Baku and is ranked third in the ISSF world rankings. Nevertheless, the fact that the German delegation has hardly been granted a place in the final in previous Olympic shooting events, not to mention a medal, may also play a role in the nervous pre-stress. That hasn't happened to the Germany team since 2016 (three golds, one silver).
In the first half-program (more information on the rules here), the German pistol shooters' performance was only mixed, with 292 points for Peter and 291 for Reitz, mainly series with an above-average number of 9s instead of 10s in the fast 4 seconds. After a full 100 points in eight seconds, Peter was briefly in 4th place on the incomplete list, followed by 99 points in 6 seconds and unfortunately only 94 points in 4 seconds, meaning a score of 585 and a temporary slip to 9th place, so no final? Christian Reitz had it even worse today, he shot his 4-second series with only 90 points, resulting in a score of 577 and a really unusually poor 23rd place. Then the missing series of the last shooters appeared on the results board and, as if by magic, Florian Peter climbed back to the top – and with sixth place got the last ticket for the final, which takes place tomorrow morning from 9:30 a.m.
Here are the results after the qualification.
2024 Olympic Games: our daily snapshots from the shooting events in Châteauroux
Everything you need to know about shooting at the 2024 Olympics...
...can be found in our overview article of all episodes of "Road to Paris" at all4shooters.com.
If you are interested in the statistics in global sport shooting, there is only one reliable source: Georgi Nekhaev has been keeping lists on his website Shooting.by for decades, which are classified as highly credible.
The reports at all4shooters.com from the last few days (also in English and Italian):
Olympic Games 2024, Day 3: 10m air rifle, mixed team 10m air pistol and men's trap finals.
Olympic Games 2024, Day 5: 50m rifle 3 positions men's qualification and women's trap final.
Olympic Games 2024, Day 7: women's 50m rifle 3 position final and Day 1 of men's skeet.
Olympic Games 2024, Day 8: men's skeet final and women's skeet qualification Day 1, plus women's 25m pistol final.
By the way: When posting on social media, you should use the official hashtags, as this increases the reach of all shooting sport messages: #ISSF | #ShootingSport | #HitTheMark | #dsbteamparis
Looking for your own Beretta DT11? We have a technical presentation of the the most successful shotgun for Trap and Skeet on all4shooters.com:
Here is our test report incl. all models and prices: https://www.all4shooters.com/en/shooting/shotguns/beretta-dt11-black-dlc-over-and-under-new-racing-line/. Franco Gussalli Beretta’s comment about the results of his brand at the Olympic Games 2024 in one word: „epic“. There is nothing to add.
