Target shooters were on the mark
Team NL wins gold in women’s team air rifle team event, silver in men’s
Just as they did at the 2011 Canada Winter Games in Halifax, Team Newfoundland and Labrador’s target shooters were the first athletes deliver a podium finish at the Canada Winter Games in Prince George, B.C. this week.
But unlike Halifax, where Ben Taylor of St. John's and Mount Pearl's Jason Harnum won bronze on the first day of competition, this time it was gold and silver that was delivered by the air rifle teams.
“It’s surreal, really, knowing we are the top women’s rifle team in the country and we won gold,” says Samantha Marsh, who finished atop the podium with teammate Hayley Barrett Monday afternoon.
“It’s just a thrill .It’s my first time being at such a big event and to do so well is just amazing.”
It’s the first gold medal for Team NL at any Canada Games since Adam Morgan was first in a diving on the three-metre board in 2001, and the first Winter Games gold medal since 1999 when Newfoundland and Labrador won six — three in cross-country skiing and three in boxing.
“The fact we got a gold medal is amazing,” says Team NL coach Dave Woolridge. “I knew it was going to tight with New Brunswick, because I know their girls are just as good as ours, but in the end we were better.”
New Brunswick finished second and Saskatchewan rounded out the top three.
Claiming silver on Monday were male air rifle teammates William Dalton and Daniel Dimitrov.
“The training we’ve had for the past number of years within the marksmanship program, especially with (Woolridge), we were definitely prepared for this,” says Dimitrov, 18, from St. John’s.
“This is definitely a highlight so far, hopefully I keep going farther,” added Dalton, 16, also from St. John’s.
While Marsh, 20, and Barrett, 15, were favoured to win a medal at the Games, Woolridge wasn’t sure where the boys might land in the pack, having not tracked the scores of their competition.
“What I tried to focus on was how our athletes do with respect to each other and with respect to a standard we set for them to achieve. As long as they’re hitting that standard, what everybody else does doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t influence us because it’s a closed-skill sport,” he says.
“We set scores that we thought were going to put us on the podium. That’s been our strategy from the 2011 Games, and we repeated it here and got on to the podium. It’s been our tactic and it’s paid off.”
Woolridge says Monday’s success is a direct result of longterm planning. Where some teams and individual athletes representing the province were selected just this year, the Newfoundland and Labrador Shooting Association identified their potential Canada Games athletes more two years ago.
“We take the people and we groom them for the high-performance end of things.”
All four shooters have the potential for more medals when the individual events takes place on Wednesday.
“It’s such a confidence boost knowing we can pull through and we can achieve this,” says Marsh, the province’s flag bearer for the opening ceremonies. “The confidence goes up 1,000 times knowing that we are able and that we have the potential.”
Adds Barrett, “If we get gold as a team, we can definitely do amazing by ourselves.”