Rose keeps focus to set new PB on her way to title

Heather Rose came away with the win having shot a personal best score at the all-important final last weekend.

The event consists of two qualifying rounds and a final of 60 shots plus 10 individual shots each with a time limit of 75 seconds.

The top-three finalists were veteran Noel Duquemin (North United), air rifle shooter Paul Guillou (Cobo United) and Rose (North United).

Duquemin won his first shooting competition back in 1959 and has represented the island at Commonwealth and Island Games most years since then.

He still enjoys various shooting disciplines, with his main focus currently on skeet events.

Rose has been practising at her home club, North United.

When asked how it’s going, she said: ‘I can generally shoot well but I can easily lose concentration and bad shots follow, bringing my overall scores down below where they should be’.

On the night, though, Rose was able to keep her concentration, scoring highly in three out of six series of 10 shots with the remaining three series being still at a good standard.

This resulted in a total score of 548.

‘That went very well. There were no bad shots, mainly nines and 10s with a few eights but nothing worse. I think that’s my PB,’ she said coming off the range.

Guillou had a steady shoot, finishing on 540, one shot being a six and few sevens thrown in.

He puts it down to having a good technique but with more focus on the air rifle discipline, the pistol practice suffers.

Duquemin was shooting a good number of 10s, but too many sevens kept his score well under-par.

All finalists were then faced with a further 10 shots in the old Olympic style format – single shots each in 75 seconds.

With the pressure on, Rose did not want to lose her eight-point advantage over Guillou, the latter having the benefit of several such finals under his belt in recent years.

Guillou shot well, scoring only nines and 10s, whereas Rose shot a seven on her third shot and again on her last shot. Duquemin also shot 10s, nines and two sevens.

Guillou was able to make up seven points, scoring a very respectable 98.5 to Rose’s 91.5.

Duquemin finished with 93.2.

The pressure might have been apparent in Rose’s final 10 shots, but she was able to hold on to the victory in the end by just one point, in the aggregate score, over Guillou.

‘Heather shot really well tonight, quite impressive,’ Guillou said.

‘I could see that her grouping was tight. I didn’t expect to lose against her, I thought Noel would be my main competition as we are normally equally matched.

‘Heather surprised us, but she is definitely a worthy winner.’