William Chetcuti reached the final barrage but missed out on a medal after placing fifth in an ISSF World Cup Double Trap shoot, held in Nicosia yesterday.

The Maltese shooter started off with a solid score of 27 from 30 clays and followed it up with a 28 in the second round.

Chetcuti fired a perfect straight of 30 in the third before wrapping up his qualifying round with a 26 and 27. His total score of 138 points lifted him to second overall from 48 participants. He was just one point short of leader Vasily Mosin, of Russia.

In the barrage, Chetcuti hit 25 from 30 and that was not enough for him to make it to the medal play-offs as he finished just one clay behind China’s Qiang Pan who took the fourth and final spot.

For his part, Nathan Lee Xuereb paid the price for a modest score of 25 in the fourth round of qualifying as he narrowly failed to book a top-six berth by a mere point after totalling 133.

Xuereb hit 28, 26, 26, 25 and 28 to finish ninth overall on 133 points, just one point behind Russia’s Mikhail Leybo who won a four-man shoot-off for a place in the final

Meanwhile, Mosin, who reached the gold medal play-off with a straight in the barrage, took the title after defeating Italy’s Emanuele Bernasconi 29-25.

In the bronze medal play-off, Pan hit a perfect 30 to see off Russia’s Leybo who only managed 25.

The Malta Shooting Sport Federation said in a statement that coach Jimmy Bugeja was satisfied with the performance of the two Maltese shooters who are now among the top 10 performers in the world.

Chetcuti and Xuereb will now turn their focus to their upcoming participation in the Mediterranean Games in Mersin, Turkey later this month.

The Double Trap competition will be held at the Erdemli Shooting Range on Wednesday, June 26.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.