Review of 2023 ISSF competition: London 2012 champion Cernograz earns men’s trap world title, Mehelba gets historic World Cup Final win under floodlights

Eleven years after becoming the Olympic men’s trap event champion at the London 2012 Games, Croatia’s Giovanni Cernograz won another global title at the age of 40.

Cernograz, who had won the European title earlier in the year, secured victory at the ISSF World Championships in Baku after a close contest with Slovakia’s 38-year-old Marian Kovacocy.

The latter, who had won the trap world title at Maribor in 2009, finished with a total of 41 to earn silver, but gold went to Cernograz with a score of 44 out of 50.

lKhaled Al-Mudhaf of Kuwait finished with the bronze medal after scoring 31.

Cernogoraz had an excellent start in the final, hitting all the first 12 targets to establish a lead he never lost and he secured gold with three targets remaining.

Not only was it the Croatian’s first world title, but his first world medal – his previous highest position at the World Championships was seventh.

En route to his victory Cernograz also earned Croatia a quota place for the Paris 2024 Olympics.

“I am proud of myself, my family, Croatian shooting sports,” Cernograz said.

“I worked hard for this, this is a great result for my country.

“After I secured the Olympic qualifying standards in the final, it was easier for me.”

The trap finals at the World Cup Final in Doha that concluded the season took place under floodlights for the first time.

And Egypt’s Abdel Aziz Mehelba provided a further historic flourish to the day by winning men’s gold shortly after his brother Azmy had earned skeet silver in a monumental shoot-out.

Once Britain’s Nathan Hales had finished in bronze position Mehelba and Italy’s Daniele Resca proceeded to the final scheduled sequence of ten shots with the latter leading 37-36.

But an early miss by the 37-year-old Resca, world champion in 2017, enabled his Egyptian opponent to draw level at 41-41.

Mehelba remained resolute during the five final shots, hitting the target with each one to leave Resca needing a hit with his last attempt to stay level.

The Italian’s head soon dropped in disappointment. No pink powder was to be seen from his final effort in the floodlit arena, and Mehelba was suddenly surrounded by jubilant fellow countrymen after a 46-45 win.

“What makes this medal special for me is – I don’t know if it happened before in the history of the World Cup Final – that I have won a gold on the same day my brother has won a silver,” Mehelba told ISSF TV.

“So I wanted to win this medal not only for myself but for both of us in the World Cup Final because I think it’s history.

“It was a very hard final. Until the last target you didn’t know who was going to win – it was amazing.

“In the end it is a game of who stays over the last three targets – they are the most important.

“Actually I was not counting accurately at the end. I knew I had a chance if I hit the last target I would win or get a shoot-off. I didn’t know exactly how it stood, but I knew when I heard people celebrating!

“I started on the last target a little bit late, so when I hit it I was happy because I thought, ‘this is the target of the competition.’”

The novel conditions clearly did not work well for two men who had stood on the Tokyo 2020 podium two years earlier.

Olympic champion Jiri Liptak was the first to be eliminated, and he was immediately followed by Britain’s bronze medallist Matthew Coward-Holley, who had been the top qualifier.

Coward-Holley had to come to terms with having an appeal for a hit turned down early on, and while he recovered his composure to see off the opening challenge of Liptak it turned out to be merely a stay of execution.

The Briton’s total of 23 out of 30 was beaten by Slovakia’s world silver medallist Kovacocy of Slovakia, who scored 24.

But Kovacocy’s form fell apart thereafter and he was the unlucky man to exit before the battle for medals.

The six World Cups involving trap shooting produced six different men’s winners.

Britain’s 2019 world champion and Tokyo 2020 bronze medallist Matthew Coward-Holley won the opening title in Rabat and finished second in Doha as victory went to Turkey’s Oguzhan Tuzun.

Cernograz’s compatriot Anton Glasnovic won at the third World Cup, in Larnaca, and the fourth title, in Cairo, went to the Czech Republic’s 41-year-old Olympic champion Jiri Liptak.

Massimo Fabrizzi of Italy won in Almaty, with the final title going to Coward-Holley’s fellow Briton Nathan Hales.