Imperial 2017 Retrospective

It has taken a while for me to get around to writing up my range report from the 2017 Imperial Meeting; a mixture of inertia, general business at work and taking a brief break from training before getting stuck back in got in the way. It's a lovely, lazy but rainy Sunday afternoon here in Laingholm with a roast in the oven and a small glass of red* next to me as I write, so it seemed like a good time to look back on how things went and where I have to go next. To summarise: I got done what I needed to get done, but still have a decent amount of work to do in the lead up to the Commonwealth Shooting Federation Championships in November and hopefully the Commonwealth Games in April 2018.

In recent years, it has been my technique and scoring at short range that has driven my aggregate positions; however this year it was a bit different. I seemed to be able to hold a reasonable group at short, but kept on sneaking them out the sides. Although the wind was tricky at times I have a sneaking suspicion that I had been helping them occasionally.

Century 600x. Elevation was mostly OK, but the wind wasn't that hard.

By contrast my long range worked very well and I dropped few points over the hill, which pulled me up nicely in the aggregates and I managed to win the Palma Aggregate only two points down, beating DC by a few vee bulls.

Corporation 1000x. Wind was slightly harder that the graph implies, but not by much.

By the end of the meeting, I had achieved what I needed to. I didn't deliver anything spectacular, but I did come away with 20th in the Grand Aggregate albeit after a rather disappointing 71.7 in the Prince of Wales where every decision I made on the wind appeared to be wrong (I had worked my way up to 4th by that point.) I made up for this minor debacle by shooting 105.15 in Queen's I and, while my 146.16 in Queen's II left the possibility of an MCS in doubt, the conditions on the Saturday were benign enough that I put in a 149.15 in the final to leave me with a Commonwealth Games MCS of 400.46

Job done.

Queen's III 900x - Shot values rewritten in pen as far as possible because the card got soaked.

Queen's III 1000x - Elevation not quite so good as 900x but good enough. If shot 10 had gauged in, I would have top-scored in the final.

The heroes of the meeting were, of course, my legendary pardner CJW who took away the Grand Aggregate (not a bad effort for a man who claims to be better at a sprint than the marathon) along with PMP who finally won his first Queen's Prize. Other notable results included Great Britain's 21st consecutive win in the Kolapore; although the only time I can see this run being broken is perhaps when the Palma Match returns to Bisley in about a decade's time**; without enough teams with enough strength in depth it is hard to envisage someone surpassing the team's professional approach and ability to select from the broadest group of eligible shooters. By contrast Wales were not able to repeat our winning National Match performance from 2016 and England once again dominated.

CJW GC #Legend

It was a good year, a good meeting. The only real regrets I have from it are that Katrina and the kids weren't able to join me, and that I didn't seem to get more than two minutes with anyone I wanted to catch up with.

* Fickle Mistress, a Pinot Noir from Central Otago.
** My apologies to the 2018 Kolapore Captain if I just jinxed you.