Oliver Sampson's blog

Another 2-day event and travel to the consistently excellent Fauxdegla ground.

This last weekend was another British shooting Olympic trap event. Once again I made the final with a 105 and then into the final.

As we all know finals are single barrel and currently with 6 competitors.

On the first 25 targets 4 junior men shot 17/25. The standard from eveyone was excellent.

Unfortuntly I did gain a mdel this time but I am looking forward to the next event at Nuthampstead.

#OlympicTrap

The title says it all. Well done Oliver.

2020 was a tough year for everyone. There is no doubt it was mentally and physically difficult. Throughout our sport there were restrictions that prevented competitions and training and you had to plan, change plans, re do plans and completely ignore plans for events and training.
On top of this a diagnosis of cancer with Olivers mother plus the mess and fiasco of GCSE’s, 2020 took a massive toll on Oliver. Competing was a good way of focussing energy and concentrating.So today Oliver is extremely pleased to have been placed 3rd Junior in the CPSA rankings and 1st in England for Juniors at DTL 1000 targets 3 grounds in the CPSA 61st rankings.
This was the hardest year for competing. Every day we had to check if we could compete. At no time was a lockdown or restriction broken. Even the routes taken to some events were check to make sure a lock down area wasn’t crossed in the travel to and from events.
The stop start nature of the lock downs had a toll on competitors as you couldn’t keep the same form and training. Just competing at 3 grounds and 1000 targets was a logistical nightmare.
Oliver has 1 sponsor, Bowman traps. If your going to train use the best. Bowman are located just a few miles from Oliver so its especially nice to have the local connection. Thank you all the team at Bowman’s

Yesterday was possibly the last competition of the year due to the lock down starting again later in the month.

The competition was held at Nottingham & District Gun club.

Nottingham is always windy but due to the storm, it was very very windy. Still after a not brilliant first round, Oliver pulled it back finishing first in Juniors (Under 21)

As we all know, the world has changed and that has meant a delay in shooting. No competitions for a long time.

We are back into planning and training mode now. My first proper training session with a coach was on Saturday 1st Aug 2020 on Olympic Trap.

We are now into planning competitions but they are very thin on the ground as you would expect.

On Sunday 15th Oliver took part in the Nottinghamshire ABT competition.

He finished with an 89/100 which took the Junior title. This also qualified Oliver for the Notts ABT team so another county cap.

Next weekend is the final BSDA event for the year so its back to East Yorkshire Clay shooting ground.

Oliver sampson this weekend competed in 2 different clay target disciplines. One on Saturday and One on Sunday at 2 different locations. We obviously have had a lot of travel and expense to compete this weekend.

Saturday Olympic Trap Nuthampstead Hertfordshire. This was a registered competition with a number of county championships being held at the same time.

Oliver scored a very respectable 86/100 in Olympic Trap. To give you an idea of how good this score is, another Junior scored 70/100 to win his counties title.

County championship No 1 done and won. He also retained this title as he won it last year.

Only 1 other Notts shooter is on the trophy with 2 wins and we plan to compete next year.

Olympic Trap is his chosen discipline and due to the hardwork of his coach Charlie Dean, BSDA, Oliver and his family he is progressing in leaps and bounds.

Sunday Handicap by Distance – Held at Nottinghamshire District Gun club.

Oliver is a B class shooter and to be honest a bit of a “bandit” in DTL based competitions. We suspect a serious classification change coming soon :(He scored 95/279 and won his second county champion badge taking the junior and overall HG. This is impressive as the overall HG is against adults. County champion no 2 won in 1 weekend!

He didnt actually want to compete in this event but given that his father was asked to referee (qualified CPSA ref but didnt ref for Olivers layout) he had to attend.

Earlier in the year he has won East Mids Junior Olympic Trap prize. This was held at East Yorkshire Clay shooting ground in July. East Mids is around 7 counties in the UK so this is a very impressive title to win.

Colt DTL High gun For Nottinghamshire. He took that with a 99/288 despite only getting a new gun the day before. This is 99 hits out of 100 with a points score of 288 out of 300 (3 points first barrel break, 2 points second barrel break) this means just 9 second barrels

3rd Junior in the East Mids ABT

DTL = Down the line. A type of clay target shooting where clays are thrown at random angles horizontal away from the competitor.Classifications run from AA to A to B to C and they are based on a 6 month average of scores in registered competitions. Handicap by Distance is a form of DTL where the competitor stands further away from the target based on their classification As its name suggests its supposed to even the playing field.
ABT = All Ball trap Similar to DTL but where the clay vertical angle is variable and the speed of the clay and therefore distance travelled is greater.
CPSA = Clay Pigeon Shooting Association, the UK governing body for these events and grounds.
Oliver turned 16 last week and therefore now competes as a Junior. If you look at the age range, this means a lot of juniors can drive themselves to events! Oliver still relies on a parent to drive him.

Saturday was another British Shooting Development Academy day at the brilliant East Yorkshire Clay Target centre. What a great facility this is.

The day was the normal shooting and training but at the end of the day we had a simulated 50 target grand final. You shoot 25 clays to get the the last 25 clays with the lowest score being eliminated. The other pressure is that these finals are single barrel and given that this is Olympic Trap, its hard.

After 25 clays I had dropped only 5 i.e. 20 ex 25

I naturally qualified for the last 25 targets. At this stage competitors drop out after each 5 clays with the last 2 shooting the last 10 targets.

I finished with a 41 ex 50 winning the event. As I said, all single barrel.

I didnt get a video of the event, but the one below is from earlier in the day.

A weekend of training and competing is coming up.

Olympic trap at Beverly on Sunday and then DTL East Midlands on Sunday at the ground in Cambridge

Sunday was the East Midland CPSA ABT competition.

A wonderful day with great weather.

The competition was well subscribed to and there was some very talented shooters. I finished with an 85 which put me in 3rd place for the juniors, not bad as this is only my third time at ABT and 9 targets more than the last time I shot it.

Next weekend is training