Lapua Sponsored Shooter, Denmark’s Torben Grimmel (pictured with Denmark coach Enrico Friedemann) has won the ISSF World Cup Final in 60 shots prone in Delhi, India, with a new World Record score! This result will be cemented in history, as this was most likely the last World Cup event for this discipline ever. Congrats Torben for an amazing victory!

“I started shooting when I was 10 years old because all my friends were at the shooting range. At first I just wanted to spend time with my friends, but after some time I started to hit the targets really well. That’s when I understood that shooting was the sport for me. My favourite discipline to shoot is 3×20 standard 300 meters. I practice 14 hours a week.

I think I handle my competition nerves in a good way. I try to reenact situations where I get nervous. Imagine that you are standing at the shooting range in a big competition and you are really nervous. The only thing you want to do is throw away the weapon and run back home and cry. Instead you get it together and complete the competition in a good way. That good feeling makes me go back to training every day because I want to feel it one more time. My best competition memory is that of the Military World Championship in Qatar 2016. I won two gold medals and a bronze medal.

The NBRSA Group Nationals took place at the end of September in St. Louis. Team Lapua USA was also represented, from left to right in the picture: Wayne Campbell, Tony Boyer and Jack Neary. And they did a very good job too, with Wayne Campbell winning the 4-Gun and Tony Boyer clenching the 3-Gun Championship! Nice work! 

The Lapua European Cup 300 m finals took place in Tolmezzo, Italy this year, with some of the very best 300 meter European rifle shooters attending. The event got off to great start on Wednesday with Lapua Team’s Peter Sidi (HUN) clenching gold in the 300 meter standard rifle, equaling the European Record! Lapua Sponsored Shooter Karl Olsson from Sweden came in second and Andrea Rossi (SUI) took third place. 

Peter Sidi.

Karl Olsson.

On Thursday the event continued with the men’s 300 m 3 position match. The gold went to Simon Claussen of Norway, followed by Bernhard Pickl of Austria and Karl Olsson. 

Bernhard Pickl.

Istvan Peni

The finals continued with the women’s event 300 m rifle 3 pos. The winner was Lapua Team’s Eva Rösken, followed by Andrea Brühlmann (SUI) and Lapua Sponsored Shooter Lisa Müller (GER). The last event was the men’s 300 m rifle prone, where Jan Lochbihler took home the gold, Valerian Sauveplane (FRA) took silver and Lapua Sponsored shooter Per Sandberg (SWE) took the bronze.

Ladies’ podium

Congrats to all, the Lapua European Cup 300 meter is back again next year!

All results as pdf

Here’s an awesome mini documentary about Lapua Team member Kevin Nevius. This day-in-the-life interview is a perfect example of just how dedicated a top shooter is, and yet so humble. That’s Kevin, a top notch guy! 
“Shooting the Shooter” is produced by the very talented Kelsey Nevius. We hope you enjoy it!

Match report:
The Firecracker 4800 Smallbore Prone Match

by Kevin Thomas, member of Lapua crew

I recently had the pleasure of shooting yet another Firecracker 4800 in beautiful Raton, New Mexico. If I recall correctly, this is the sixth year that I’ve shot this particular match, and it’s become one of the highlights of my calendar. This is an annual Smallbore Prone match put on by Lones Wigger, and is usually attended by a pretty tough crowd. At most, a casual glance up and down the line will reveal several Olympians (most notably, Lones himself), a number of National and International champions, as well as some of the elite of the military smallbore teams. Something of a gathering of eagles within the smallbore community.

Attendance was down a bit this year due to some scheduling conflicts, which will, hopefully, be rectified next year. Still, we had a full relay of some 35 shooters vying for the win, and some remarkably impressive scores were shot. The match itself is a typical smallbore prone format, with the exception that Lones has chosen to omit the 50-yd stage. This reduces the match aggregate to 4800, rather than the usual 6400 points for prone matches of this sort. Lones logic for this is that with the level of shooters that show up for this match, virtually all of the top contenders will shoot perfect 400s on the 50-yard stage. This means that it essentially has no bearing on the outcome of the match, and dropping that stage reduces the amount of time shooters spend on the range each day. Given the beauty of the surroundings in Raton, and they myriad things to do in the area, this leaves time for a bit of afternoon exploring which is always a welcome attraction. Definitely no shortage of things to see and do in this magnificent part of the country.

This year’s match proved to be fairly normal in terms of Raton weather. Warm, but not uncomfortably so, an afternoon thunderstorm each day, sometimes catching us, sometimes just providing a backdrop in the distance. Relatively mild winds this year aided in some impressive scores being shot, though there were a couple days when things became, uh, dicey. Especially news in the 100-yard portions of the match. At times, I found myself using some pretty adventurous hold-offs, but still managed to keep them pretty well in the middle. Keeps the match interesting, and the shooters on our toes.

Lapua was well represented by shooters at this particular match. In my own case, I was using a McMillan stocked Remington 40-X, with a selected lot of Midas + that had been chosen at Lapua’s Service Center in Mesa, Arizona last year.  

The scores stayed pretty tight throughout the week, with the leaders trading spots here and there by a mere point or two (at most), making it a down to the wire game. Ultimately, the match was won by Glenn Dubis, with Steve Goff taking second and Ron Wigger finishing up in a close third. In addition to the awards, Lones puts on a BBQ for the shooters every year that has become quite the social gathering. Besides getting to know your fellow shooters on a more personal basis, it’s also a wonderful place to hear shooters stories, with topics ranging from small local matches where interesting or comical things have happened, to the most intense levels of National and International competition. Wigger’s time in the game yields an apparently endless supply of fascinating stories of Olympic champions, unique personalities, tough competitions and valuable shooting lessons. It’s one of the highlights in an otherwise delightful week. So . . . if your available over the Fourth of July week, put this one on your calendar. I promise you, you won’t be disappointed. See you on the line! 

This is definitely the year of Lapua Team’s Cathy Winstead-Severin (pictured above), as she has racked up win after win this season! In spring, she won the Conard Bernhardt Cup in Pe Ell, WA and the Iron Man Rifle Silhouette in Missoula, MT. Since then, she has also taken four NRA National Silhouette Rifle Championships: Smallbore Standard and Hunting Rifle, matching the two at the Silhouette High Power Rifle Championships. And after that, it was time to excel in Canada at the Canadian NFA National Smallbore Silhouette Championship, which she won. What an amazing lady, congrats Cathy!

Other Team successes include that of Lapua Team’s Matthew Brousseau, who finished 2nd out of 109 in the MPA Precision Rifle Series Match in Omaha, Georgia. Awesome job, Matt! In the picture he is posing with another Team member, Stephen ‘Kid’ Culpepper, who also participated in the match.

Stephen didn’t quite finish that high up in the ranks (yet), but then again, he’s been busy succeeding at the U.S. Nationals this summer. Stephen finished an impressive third overall in the NRA Highpower Rifle XTC. Huge congrats to Stephen! Here is his recap of the match:

 
“This year, the team matches were returned to the beginning of the schedule so they were a good opportunity to both warm up for the individual championships as well as learn about the range at Camp Atterbury, since many of us (including myself) had never been there before. Things started well on the first day with my teammate Hugo Adelson and I winning the 2nd Amendment two man team match. This success carried over to the second day, when the two of us plus Norm Houle and Ron Zerr won the RNDC Trophy four man team match. On the first day of the individual championship, there were a number of really good scores posted and the leader board was full of service rifle competitors. I personally did not have a stellar performance that day but was competitive (I think I was somewhere around 11th or 12th place at that point) and knew that we had not yet shot 600 yards yet, which typically separates the match rifles from the service guns. The second day was ultimately a complete rain-out and the few shots that were fired that day ended up getting thrown out. The third day was HOT and muggy due to all the rain from the previous day. Since we missed an entire day, they made up one of the 600 yard matches that would have normally been fired on day two so it also turned out to be a LONG day. At the end of the third day, I again hadn’t won any of the individual matches but also had been consistent so was in third place going into the last day. On the final day, none of the top competitors faltered so the final order for the Championship did not change so a Bronze podium finish for Team Lapua!”

Steffen Olsen from Denmark is a tough contender in the 50 and 300 meter rifle competitions. Here is his story!

“I’ve been shooting since I was 5 years old, as all my closest family were shooters when I was a child. I’m educated as a lawyer, but I’m also a reservist in the army. Other than shooting, my hobbies are parachuting and taking care of my family. With a lot of training on the range (1000 pcs, 15-20 hours/week in season) I don’t have time for many other things.

My favourite disciplines are the match disciplines. 3×20 & 3×40 on both 50 and 300 meters. Regarding favourite Lapua ammo, I really like the 6mm BR and the accuracy I get from that calibre.

I’m pretty good at handling my competition nerves. I try to keep focus regardless of how the competition is going. Focus on the technical aspects usually works for me. When technique is good it’s easier to have confidence. I also do mental training with audio a few times a week. This season, my biggest challenge has been a physical one – I’ve had an injury in my right knee, so it has been a challenge during the past few months, particularly in the kneeling position.

My favourite competition memory is when we won the gold medal in Rio at the World Games in 2011 in the team event with the Danish Military Shooting Team. My future goals include getting a medal at the European Cup final in 2017 or 2018, and hopefully a place in the final at the World Championships in 2018.”