After shooting a remarkable international personal best of 122 out of 125 targets at the Changwon ISSF World Cup on Wednesday 12th July, Australia’s Penny Smith, currently ranked number 10 in the world, finished qualifying in the Womens Trap Shotgun event in first position. Smith progressed through to the semi finals where she again led the field in semi final one with an impressive 22 out of 25 targets hit. Smith continued through to the medal match with three other competitors representing Italy, China and Great Britain. After hitting a 30 out of 35 targets Smith won the silver medal, only one target behind China’s CuiCui Wu who won the Gold. Great Britains Lucy Hall took the bronze medal.
After the medal ceremony, speaking about her performance Smith said ‘I had a really good performance with a 122/125 in qualifying which was a really big achievement for me. I came here with a goal I really wanted to achieve and I really wanted to medal. I had an absolutely cracking final and just fell short at the end but I can’t complain at all to come away with the silver medal, so extremely happy.’
Smiths’ fellow team mate and Rio Olympic Gold Medallist Catherine Skinner (currently ranked 9th in the world), narrowly missed out on a place in the finals to finish in 10th place.
2022 has been a huge year of international competition for Smith on the back of her Tokyo Olympic campaign (in 2021) where she finished in 6th place. So far this year Smith has won two gold medals as part of the Trap Team Women with teammates Catherine Skinner and Laetisha Scanlan (Cyprus and Italy ISSF World Cups) an individual bronze medal at the Granada, Spain ISSF Grand Prix as well as a Mixed Teams Bronze medal with team member Mitch Iles at the Cyprus World Cup.
Smith and Skinner will now join teammates James Willett and Thomas Grice and in the Mixed Trap Teams event on Thursday to close out the Changwon World Cup campaign. Speaking about this next event Smith said ‘I am really looking forward to it. James and I haven’t shot mixed teams for a while but will be good to get out there and get amongst it with him and see what we can do.’
At the conclusion of Changwon, Smith will then turn her focus to preparations for the ISSF Shotgun World Championships to be held in Croatia in September. When asked if this World Cup was good preparation for the World Championships, Smith said ‘Yeah definitely…coming to Korea and getting a medal and then preparing for World Champs I am really excited for what the rest of the year holds.’
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