Australian Pistol athlete Sergei Evglevski felt he was well prepared for his Olympic Shooting debut but was unable to withstand a severe bout of nerves when he contested the first stage of the men’s 25m Rapid Fire Pistol today.
Shooting is a precision sport that requires a low heart rate and a steady hand and Evglevski admitted it was challenging for him to remain calm.
Evglevski tallied 285 points out of a possible 300 points to be in 19th place after day one of the event, eight points behind sixth-placed Ghulam Mustafa Bashir of Pakistan.
The second stage will be conducted tomorrow.
“It was a lot harder than I expected. I should have expected it, being the hardest comp ever – and it is,” said Evglevski.
“As soon as I got to the line, the nerves just took over me for a bit. I’ll know not to do that for tomorrow.
“I felt like my mind was pretty blank leading up to it. I was focused too much on my nerves rather than the process of what I actually needed to do. As soon as I started shooting, the nerves took over.
“My heart rate was just racing, and it was a lot harder than I expected,” he said.
With his mother Lalita Yauhleuskaya being a five-time Olympian for Australia and Belarus, Evglevski well knows the scale of the Olympics.
“It’s just huge compared to anything else like World Cups, World Champs and Commonwealth Games. The Olympics just tops it all. It’s 50 million times bigger,” he said.
Evglevski will be joined in action on the last day of the Shooting competition by Dane Sampson and Jack Rossiter who will both contest the men’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions event.
It will be Sampson’s third event of the Games after being unplaced in the men’s 10m Air Rifle and the Mixed 10m Air Rifle Teams event and he said he is looking forward to the competition.
“I feel that I’m in better form for 3P and I feel energised,” said Sampson.
Rossiter, along with Evglevski, was the last Australian members of the Shooting team to arrive in Tokyo and he enjoyed a strong training camp in Brisbane prior to his arrival.
Rossiter attended the 2016 Rio Olympics and feels better prepared for Tokyo.
“I feel more chilled. more relaxed. The range is great, and I think the scores are going to be high,” he said.
