ISSF World Cup Rifle / Pistol / Shotgun · Baku, AZE

The 2000 Olympic Silver medalist keeps on piling world cup medals on his road to Rio. With only 40 days to go to the opening ceremony of Rio 2016, he climbed the world ranking up to the first place, recovering from a back surgery.

The 2000 Olympic Silver medalist Torben Grimmel of Denmark won his third 50m Rifle Prone Men gold medal of the season, out of four world cup stages, at the ISSF World Cup in Baku, today.

The 40-year old athlete qualified for the final with 622.2 points, and took the lead of the final after the 14^th shoot, keeping it right to the 20^th and last final shot.

With a score of 208.4 points, he beat Great Britain’s Kenneth Parr (27), who finished in second pocketing his first ISSF medal with 208.0 points.

Parr survived a shoot-off against Croatia’s first-time finalist Petar Gorsa (28), beating him by 10.6 to 10.1 as they tied after shot 18. Gorsa eventually took the Bronze with 187.5 points.

“I am so happy, I am so excited,” said Grimmel after the final. The Danish shooter climbed up the world ranking to the first place, this year, by winning three out of four world cup stages (Bangkok, Munich, Baku).

“It has been really hard. I have had a hard time yesterday, like everybody else, because of the win. And today it was even worst. The wind wasn’t blowing that hard, but it changed often, back and forth,” he added, commenting on the windy weather conditions that affected the elimination and the qualification stages of the competition, yesterday and today.

“I recovered from my back surgery, and changed my focus a little bit. I am trying to make competitions equal as trainings, as much as I can. And that seems to work out fine,” continued Grimmel, who had only won one medal in this Olympic cycle, between 2013 and 2015, before his comeback in 2016.

“With 40 days to go to the Games I am trying to keep it easy, and continue to work at home as I did during the last months.”

Following the medalists, Serbia’s 1992 Olympic Bronze medalist Stevan Pletikosic (44) finished in fourth place with 166.7 points, ahead of Kim Jonghyun of the Republic of Korea (30), who recorded his best world cup finish in career ending up in 5^th place with 144.8 points.

Today’s final turned out to be disappointing for the current world record holder and winner of the last world cup stage in Rio de Janeiro, Germany’s Henri Junghaenel (28), closing the match in 6^th place with 124.2 points. He was followed by India’s London 2012 Olympic Bronze medalist Gagan Narang (33), 7^th with 103.1 points, and by Belarus’ Yury Shcherbatsevich (31), 8^th with 81.8 points.