Day two for Team ShootClay in Portugal and after a great hotel breakfast we relaxed a little and then headed to the Shooting Ground for practice and the opening ceremony.
We grabbed more practice tokens and made our way to some different parcours to test ourselves. Once again, great variety of landscapes and targets, on our first parcour we shot a blaze going away, an incoming crow, a driven bird from the tower and a tricky crosser obstructed by a tree, some of the pair combinations were excellent, really testing your kill position and your gun speed for the second bird. Both Bob and I were shooting fairly well, we tackled about 5 parcours with some straights for Bob and some high scores for me – I was particularly pleased with the number of first barrel kills on the singles, and some good pairs.
We packed up – and headed back for a drink before the opening ceremony, whilst we waited we were treated to a low-flying aerobatic display from a small stunt plane – this was pretty cool with the plane looking low enough to shoot as a crosser!
The opening ceremony was preceded by a shooting exhibition – with George Digweed, Christophe Auvret, Cheryl Hall, Beatriz Laparra, Joaquim Rosa Luis and Sofia Alberquerque taking on a 25 target layout. With a massive crowd watching, the all-stars laid on an excellent show – quick shooting, and tackling some really tricky pairs. I wasn’t counting scores – but didn’t see anyone drop many, so it was pretty high scoring. I’m posting some photos over on the forum.
The opening ceremony was interesting, with all the national teams being lead in behind their flag, great to see so many nationalities taking part with team GBR looking resplendent in blazers, the French and Italians looked excellent as well as the host nation in polo-shirts in the Green of their flag, and the German team sponsored and uniformed by Kreighoff.
After the ceremony, some short instructions and then a mad, disorganised scrum to get hold of our squad details, back numbers and timetables for tomorrow. We also got a small goodie bag, with a bottle of wine labelled for the championships along with all the details we need for the competition starting tomorrow.
Team ShootClay are in different squads, and I’m in with Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Italian and French shooters, I’m pretty excited to meet up with them and get to watch some great shooting. Over the day we’ve met some lovely people, from the US, France, Sweden, Austria and many more – our Team ShootClay t-shirts have gained loads of attention, and we’ve even been offered money for some of our spares.
Early nights for Team ShootClay – competition starts at 09.00am – so stay posted for score updates as we get them!
