Shooting, skeet: Martina Bartolomei wins gold and secures a national place for Paris 2024

Victory and Olympic quota pass for Italy in skeet shooting. Martina Bartolomei won the gold medal at the European Games in Cracow and clinched the second and final national place available for the Italians in skeet, after the one sealed by Diana Bacosi thanks to her triumph in the World Championships in Osijek, Croatia, last October.

Fifth at the end of the qualifying rounds with 121 clay hits out of 125, Bartolomei overcame the hurdle of a tricky semi-final, concluding with 28/30 behind Germany’s Nadine Messerschmidt but ahead of Sweden’s Larsson and Great Britain’s Rutter.

In the final, the Italian missed just three shots, going on to compete for the win and a quota spot for the Paris 2024 Games against Greek shooter Emmanouela Katzouraki, who missed two clay targets while Bartolomei came away with 37/40. For Italy, this is the first Olympic pass to have been won at the European Games in Krakow.

“I prepared for this competition really well - explained the Italian -because I knew it was the first chance to win the Olympic pass that we, the women, had so far missed out on. I gave my all and it went very well. The mistakes in the final? In our sport it can happen. There is a lot of emotion and sometimes you can’t handle it in the right way. At that point I thought ‘It’s not over yet,’ and I gave it 100% in the final. It went well”.