Practical shooting is rapidly growing in popularity in Finland. At the weekend, the WC championships held during the Salon WC week have a record number of participants.
The floor thumps and the air hisses when the world champion of practical shooting Kim Leppänen drops boards. It’s like in an American TV series, where the police take over the room in a brutal way. The world champion moves around the stages built in the room, selects a board at a time and finally knocks them down one by one with quick trigger pulls.
Leppänen has arrived at the Sports Shooters training hall in Tampere to get in shape for the competition, as the Practical Action Air Championship will be contested during the week of the Salon Championship. The deciding moments of the competition can be followed live from Areena on Sunday.
Practical is currently Finland’s fastest growing shooting sport, which attracts with its versatility. The fast-paced sport combines physical performance, shooting and weapon handling skills, and tactical intelligence.
– This is a versatile sport where you shoot for points that are divided by the time spent. This is where A, C and D hits, downed tin boards and time are measured. The shooting task should therefore be solved as quickly and accurately as possible. It doesn’t help to be too fast, when you don’t hit, or too accurate, when you’re slow, world champion Leppänen says.
In the sport, shooting tasks are solved, where competitors can use their own creativity to make the fastest performance. You can shoot the targets placed on variable courses in the order you want, that is, for example, you can plan the necessary magazine changes at the intervals that best suit the shooter.
One of the charms of the sport is that the shooting mission and courses are not standardized, but come as surprises to the competitors.
– The course of the upcoming SC race is challenging. There are long shooting distances and difficult shooting positions. The track has, for example, the so-called Cooper’s tunnel, where the competitor is fined for moving the tunnel’s structures. But there isn’t really any teasing there, but there is enough of a challenge, Oskari Sivula, assistant director of the competition, laughs.
Smooth movement and thoughtful shots
The practical SC championship that will be contested in Salo this weekend is the Action Air competition with air weapons. Action Air is often the practice and winter sport of practical shooters. Kim Leppänen normally competes with gunpowder weapons in the summer season, but also a bullet gun is accurate in the hands of a top shooter.
– Yes, these are accurate, as long as that accuracy is related to the shooting distance. Action Air is shot indoors, where there is no wind and shooting distances are a maximum of 15-20 meters. With a high-quality weapon, you hit exactly where you aim. In a skill sport, the equipment must be competitive in order to really measure the skill, and not differences in the equipment, Leppänen states.
The final solutions of the Salo competition of the SM week can be seen live on Sunday at Areena starting at 12:45 in the event stream produced by mobile devices. The sport has not been seen in live broadcasts before, so world champion Kim Leppänen tells you what to pay attention to in the historic Areena debut.
– If the shooter’s movement looks dynamic from the outside, and there are not terribly extra movements, then it usually means a fast time. There should be no extra shots. Even if the cues go bam, bam, bam, but the boards don’t fall at the same pace, time is wasted. A guy who moves smoothly and uses as many balls as there are boards, he is probably high in the results, Leppänen describes.