COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (February 12, 2019)
Thirteen USA Shooting athletes are on their way to Al Ain, United Arab Emirates for the first World Shooting Para Sport (WSPS) World Cup of 2019 starting on Thursday and running through February 24.
This WSPS World Cup marks one of three opportunities for athletes to earn Paralympic Games quotas in 2019. A quota is essentially a country’s ticket for an athlete to compete in a given event at the Paralympic Games. The United States is bringing five Paralympians and some rising talent to Al Ain and will be looking to make up some ground in the quota department as the USA Shooting Team has only secured one quota thus far in the R6 (Mixed 50m Rifle Prone SH1) event.
At the World Cups in 2018, USA Shooting athletes narrowly missed out on quotas and will look to grab them in Al Ain. 2018 USA Shooting Paralympic Athlete of the Year Taylor Farmer (Castalia, Ohio, pictured) narrowly missed out on two quotas when she won bronze medals in the R2 (Women’s 10m Air Rifle Standing SH1) and R8 (Women’s 50m Three-Position Rifle SH1) events at the World Cup in Chateauroux, France in November. At the Robert Mitchell Rifle Championships which concluded this weekend, Farmer was posting world-class scores in R3 (Mixed 10m Air Rifle Prone SH1) where she shot the top cumulative score, shooting a 631.8 on the first day and 630.8 on the second. Check out this feature from Team USA/U.S. Paralympics about Farmer: https://origin-azure4.teamusa.org/US-Paralympics/Features/2019/February/12/A-Star-On-The-Rise-Para-Shooter-Taylor-Farmer-Has-Another-Shot-For-Paralympic-Quota-This-Month[1].
Kevin Nguyen (Westminster, California/U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit) was the top finisher for the United States at the 2018 World Championship in Cheongju, South Korea where he finished in ninth place in R6 (Mixed 50m Rifle Prone SH1), just
