Bacosi triumphs in Skeet at the World Championship and wins an Olympic quota place

Diana Bacosi gave a perfect performance at the World Championship Shotgun, which takes place in Osijek. The Italian won the Skeet Women Final securing the gold medal and a Paris 2024 Olympic quota place. The Rio 2016 Olympic gold medallist, who also took silver at Tokyo 2020, won a second individual world title, following that of Lonato in 2019, hitting 37 of the 38 targets in the final. The competition’s final showdown was interrupted earlier than the 40 scheduled targets as the Azzurra shooter moved out of reach of Britain’s Amber Hill, the reigning European champion, who took silver with 31 targets out of 36. Bronze went to the American shooter Samantha Simonton.

Gabriele Rossetti, however, came away empty-handed. The Tuscan shooter, champion in Rio 2016 alongside Diana Bacosi, finished the men’s skeet semi-final in fourth place with 17 out of 20 targets, failing to make the cut for the final, which would also have guaranteed Italy an Olympic quota spot. The gold medal was clinched by Egyptian competitor Azmy Mehelba, who outstripped American Vincent Hancock (silver) and the Qatari Rashid Saleh Al-Athba (bronze). Elsewhere in men's skeet, the Italian team has already conquered a national quota place thanks to Luigi Lodde’s silver scooped at last month’s European Championships; today’s result for Bacosi means Italy have reached the requisites needed to be able to field a pair in the mixed event which is set to debut in Paris.

In the shooting discipline, the Italia Team’s presence at Paris 2024 had already been guaranteed in the women’s trap thanks to Silvana Stanco’s triumph last month at the European Championships.

The Azzurri currently qualified for Paris 2024 now stand at four (one man, three women) in two disciplines:

- Shotgun - 3 quota places: 1 Trap woman, 1 Skeet woman, 1 Skeet man

- Gymnastics (rhythmic) - 1 quota place: all-around individual